


Curiosity

by DanaFarraige



Category: GreedFall (Video Game)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst and Feels, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst and Humor, Bump to Explicit for Future Disturbing Topics, But Feel Free to Hop Aboard, F/M, On Hiatus While the World Explodes, Plot with a Splash of Porn, Romance, Tags Are Fun, We've Officially Left Canon In Our Wake
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2020-10-21 10:14:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 46,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20691821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DanaFarraige/pseuds/DanaFarraige
Summary: She always had a thousand questions for him.  She made him have a thousand more.Why was a noble so approachable?  How could she hold her liquor nearly as well as him?  Most importantly: exactly how much would he regret getting involved with her?Damn him to the depths for his curiosity.





	1. How Far Do They Go?

It had started like most of his mistakes did: with a late night, a deck of cards, and wandering, watchful eyes. 

His own, this time. “You conniving shit!”

She’d given a high, feminine snicker that had sounded out of place on her gravelly voice. “Language, Captain! Besides, what did I do?”

“I saw you palm that card, you wench! I’ve been playing this game near as long as I’ve been alive; you think I don’t know a cheat when I see one?”

The Coin Guard’s laughter had been nasal, gruff, and far more fitting of his character. “Her? Cheat? You must be mad!”

But he hadn’t been, though the Coin Guard had turned out to be a fool.

He had broken out the rum after that, and they’d taken to a more daring game. Two truths and a lie. His second mistake. 

Six shots, and her bodyguard had hit the floor just after insisting he was ‘fine.’

Somehow, she’d still been conscious, and she’d asked, “Captain, how far do those tattoos go?”

An innocent question, of course, that his inebriated mind had taken somewhere filthy. Especially because she seemed perpetually content to call him by his title, not his name. He’d trailed a finger ‘round his jaw, her gaze following ever lower. His next lie had been that his tattoos stopped at his neck. 

A lie she hadn’t caught, along with three others. 

But another four shots, and she too had gone down for the count, so he’d left her and her bodyguard with the half-emptied bottle and his hat in an effort to preemptively jog their memory in the morning. 

…Along with a potion for the impending headaches. Even he wasn’t that much of an ass.

He’d retired to his cabin, the gentle rock of the steady seas lulling him into slumber when a knock had roused him.

His third mistake.

He’d answered his door.

And then, he’d stood face to face with a woman still tipsy but cognizant.

A woman wearing his damned tricorne.

She’d asked him that same question about his tattoos, and it had been then that he’d started to doubt her supposed purity. 

A doubt that now laid upon the floor with their clothes as she sprawled across his chest.

Nobility was easy to figure out. They either stared down their noses at every commoner, or they envied the hell out of them, wishing they could be them. But this one…

Well…

Where her coin laid was anyone’s guess, though the things she’d done had hardly screamed of either. 

As did the fact that she’d screamed at all.

He pulled his shirt, her makeshift gag, from where it had fallen about her chest, tossing it onto the floor with the rest of their garments. With clothes haphazardly discarded in the quickly abating darkness.

A gesture she found either offensive or amusing, based upon her expression. Again, he could hardly tell.

But she though she clapped her hands across her bared chest, her tone was light and mocking. “Captain, what scandalous behavior.”

“Must you call me ‘Captain’? I do have a name, you know.”

“Oh, I know. But you get this glint in your eye when I use your title, and it is…” Leaning inward, throwing a leg over him, she trailed a finger down his lips, his chin, his throat. Traced the first path her tongue had taken. “Intoxicating. Like all these tattoos… they truly are everywhere.”

“Or, more likely, you’re still ‘intoxicated’ by the rum. That’s a strong batch, stronger than you’d be used to anyhow.” He pulled her fingers from his face, ignoring her protesting glare. “Your body guard’s a lightweight, by the way. He should work on that. Could be dangerous for you the next time you decide to go back-alley drinking.”

A huff sounded as she rolled back to his side, containing more authentic offense than her last. “He is not my bodyguard! You think I need a man to protect me?”

He… didn’t quite know what to think about her. Privileged, down to the silk of her blouse and the suede of her shoes, but not in the way she’d downed shots like water. Not in the salacious questions she’d asked him that he’d promptly ignored. Certainly not in the way she’d ridden him; noble women hardly liked to do any work in bed at all.

“…Captain?”

“Mmm, I was caught up in trying to picture you fighting, and… do you know, I couldn’t seem to do it?”

She shoved him backwards, mounting him once more as the sheet tangled between them. Nearly ground against him through the thin fabric. “And who fought off your hold beast, hmm?”

The friction was…

Not acknowledgeable without making a fool of himself. “You paced around it and shot at it until it died. That hardly takes skill. I could have done so with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back.”

A sharp exhale. No offense. Something… else. 

And here, he’d thought he’d satisfied her curiosity. The richer types were never one for more than a quick fling with someone below their station.

“Then, shall we see how you perform with one hand tied behind your back, Captain?”

_ Ah. _

His eyes fluttered shut. He sucked in salt air through his teeth.

What a proposal, even if she wouldn’t be able to find a knot that could hold him. 

But this… this couldn’t happen again.

He pushed her to the side though his skin protested the sudden lack of warmth. “It’s nearly morn. You may be able to relax on this ship, but some of us have work to do.”

“Are you kicking me out?”

“Shocking, I know. But there is a first time for everything, Lady De Sardet.” He stood, then crossed to his closet, pulling some fresh clothes out and on. “Perhaps one of these days, you’ll get used to not being catered to everywhere you go.”

“Taking it that means I can’t come back tonight?”

She… wanted to…? 

He dared a glance back. Again, a mistake.

She lay, elbows propped against his pillow, a leg dangling over the side of his bed. A purposeful display from a woman not without guile. A woman far from the initial description he’d received of her. If she were a ‘waifish ingenue’, the standards for language in Sérène had fallen far. “I could cater to you tonight, if you’d like. The knots in all those muscles… I was with a contortionist from the Bridge Alliance once; she showed me quite a few useful tricks. Tricks I could share, if you’ll welcome me back.”

But which was the act? The refined noblewoman he’d met back at port, or this scandalous siren before him? 

What if they both were? The rich were so fond of their guises. Of their lies. 

He yanked his gaze away. “Some things must be earned.”

“‘Earned’? I didn’t earn your favor last night?”

A sharp laugh escaped him. “With a quick lay? My dear Lady, if I committed myself to everyone I’ve ever laid with, there wouldn’t be enough left of me to cremate for a burial at sea.”

As expected, she stood, threw her clothes on, then came to rest against his door. All in silence. 

The admiral had always said his sharp tongue would be his undoing.

“Well then, Captain, I’ll see you next game night. Until then, enjoy driving your boat.”

She’d- she’d dared to- “You mean, ‘commanding’ my ‘ship’? I’m a captain, not some damned carriage rider!”

But she was gone, out the door, shouting down the hall without a care as to who heard. “And I’m a noble, if you’ll recall! We hardly remember such trivial things.”

She- she-

That _ witch _.

Swearing up a storm under his breath, he crossed to his porthole and threw it open to let some fresh air in. Air to clear his head. 

A mistake, because now, he had so many questions.

Questions that didn’t matter, because this had been a one-time occurrence.

…Hadn’t it?


	2. Seven Rings

Despite the voice in his head that screamed of it being a horrid idea, again, he’d attended their card game on his next night off. Again, he’d drank them all under the table, including two of his own crew.

Easy.

But not her.

She’d held her own and enough liquor to fell a small horse, and had asked if he’d liked to play a more scandalous form of poker.

So, idiot that he was, he’d obliged, and they’d ended up nude in his cabin once more, their clothes scattered across the floor along with cards, this time. 

Those damned cards.  Every mess he ever got into was always their fault.

And as they lay in bed, a lantern beside him casting shadows that intertwined with the sun’s rising light, she looped a finger through tonight’s question: the rings on his body.

First the one in his ear. Then, the two on his chest that matched her own. A lower one through his navel. One lower still that had been hidden inside her not long ago.

She lingered upon that one. “I thought I felt something out of the ordinary last time, but it was too damned dark to see.”

A darkness he’d kept purposefully kept. The woman already asked so many questions, questions he didn’t need, and…

As if he’d summoned it, there lit that cursed twinkle in her eye.

He sighed. “Go ahead. Ask. They always ask.”

‘Did it hurt?’ 

‘Why there?’ 

Sometimes just, ‘Why?’ 

Questions spawned from curiosity with no regard for privacy. With no thought to the fact that maybe, his reasons for the way he adorned his body were his own.

“Did it hurt?”

Of course. The most basic one. “I-”

“Did it hurt when  _ Cengeden’dia  _ coughed you up from the depths of the ocean?”

And, damn him, he laughed. Hardly the question he’d expected. A version of the usual trope-y flirt that she’d cared enough to tailor to him. “You’ll get along well on Teer Fradee if you already speak the natives’ language.”

“Natives? It’s a tale I’ve heard; that’s all.”

Not one that he had been told, and he’d learned more than his fair share of sea shanties.

Her eyes went wide. “You’ve never heard it, have you? It’s my favorite.”

He ran a hand over the sea serpent coiled in ink, spiraled around her thigh. The only mark on her, save a few scars and the moss-like birthmark that crept around her jaw. A serpent done in a blue not dissimilar to his own tattoos, another thing the light had revealed. A rare, marvelous thing. “Your tale wouldn’t have anything to do with this, would it?”

But his inward-creeping gesture had brought a different kind of glint into her eye. “Keep going where you’re headed, and you’ll have to wait to find out.”

“I’ll have to wait anyhow.” He dropped his hand and cocked his head towards the window. “Nearly dawn.”

It could have been his imagination or a trick of the light, but he would have sworn on a bottle that her smile had fallen ever so slightly. “Indeed it is.”

He made to get up.

She grabbed his wrist. “Same time next week?”

“Why?”

“‘Why’…?” Again, not a question she’d taken offense to, looking to him instead with that seemingly insatiable lust for knowledge shining in her eyes. “Why do you think?”

“I…”

Some people wanted company. Some liked the attention. But those people had always been satisfied in one or two trysts. Had let him have his excuse of busyness or errands or some nonexistent wife and/or husband in a foreign port that would find out and be ‘absolutely devastated’.

The rest of the women, he could scare off with some tale of his fellows absconding with whatever mythical child their union produced. Another lie. Some… hundreds of trials on his end, with none ending in that.

The rest of the men had been more willing to take ‘no’ for an answer. Asked less questions, like him. Left with a wistful smile and an invite that he knew where to find them. An invite he never took.

But what excuse would she buy? 

De Sardet was quick; he could only give one once.

…Did he want to?

“Well, I’ll take your stunned silence as needing more time to find an answer, so you’ll have it.” She stood, the sea serpent submerging underneath her clothes. “…Until next Friday.”

He-

But that’d hadn’t been a-

“I’ll see you around, Captain.”

‘Captain’. Spoken with none of the formality she used above deck. Spoken in a way that sent a roil of heat through him. “Unfortunately, Lady De Sardet. Don’t let the tide take you.”

Her airy, unaffected laugh bubbled through his room, only dampened by the door she shut behind her.

‘Lady De Sardet.’

The name of some stuffy woman who liked to starfish, not her. Not someone who chuckled and called his bluffs and canoodled with her captain and was captivated by his cock ring. Her name might suggest it, but this woman was far from a ‘Lady’.

A bad thing? A horrible turn of events because that meant she was someone he couldn’t predict? Couldn’t shove into a box like everyone else, slap a label on it, then throw it down in the hold with some china a crewman would inevitably break?

He flopped back into the covers, his sudden motion sending a long, light hair floating into the air.

A hair he caught and twirled around his fingers. One far too light for her tanned skin. 

Pallor. Another thing she didn’t share with nobility.

Boots clicked across the deck some two floors above him, a distant voice drifting through his porthole as she bid his crew good morning.

A woman with hair that smelled of sea salt, not expensive perfumes.

Perhaps the mystery she presented wasn’t quite the travesty, after all.


	3. You Brought Marbles On My Ship?

A bout of illness had spread through his crew, brought on by the foolishness of a deckhand who had insisted on ‘exploring’ during a brief port stop for fresh water. Nothing serious. Nothing they all wouldn’t get over. Enough to make him segregate the sick and the healthy so the entire vessel didn’t catch it and take a dip under the weather.

The Coin Guard had been one of the unlucky ones, as had the Lady’s cousin.

But she hadn’t. And that Friday, she’d brought some odd game to his cabin with her, arriving far earlier than normal. 

It wasn’t as if anyone was up and about to see them, and still, he’d rushed her in, only half listening to her explanation of the game’s rules, half poised to throw her and her game board into his closet the moment someone knocked. 

But no one had, and now, he was badly losing at a game he had no clue how to play. “And I want to get to the opposite corner of the star… why?”

She shrugged. “You just do. Why does one want to get to the opposite side of the board in checkers?”

“I thought you said _ this _ was checkers; this is not-”

“It’s a variant on checkers!”

He picked up his game piece, making a face at it. At the cursed little thing. “Checkers. With marbles.”

“Yes!”

A sigh escaped him. “You brought _ marbles _ on my ship? If you lose one of these, I’ll be stepping on it for weeks. With the rock of the deck, the damned things never leave.”

“I brought glass circles on your boat, yes.”

He narrowed his eyes. Nearly threw the board at her. 

‘Nearly’ because the only thing worse than losing one marble on a ship would be losing sixty. “I could kill you.”

“And that would horribly void your contract.”

Still was mildly tempting in a grim, humorous sort of way. “An anchor hitch ‘round a weight and about your wrists, then toss you overboard. That’s all it would take. No one would know.”

She’d stared for a moment, light brows nearly disappearing into her hairline. And then, she’d started to laugh.

Contagious laughter that felled him where illness had failed. 

And before long, she was tangled in his arms, and he in hers, her confusing game safely tucked under his dresser. The sheets tucked underneath them. Her nose tucked just above his collarbone as sweat from his brow dripped onto the pillow like the rain that had started outside.

He only stood to shut the porthole once they’d finished, knocking his toe on his way back to bed upon…

Upon…

Three small glass spheres loosed themselves from their confines, two bouncing off the baseboard and skittering off to lurk in some corner of his cabin. One disappearing underneath the crack of his door on a journey to accost everyone else aboard.

De Sardet took one look at his face, then hid herself underneath his covers. 

Well. 

Most of herself. Above her head, she presented her wrists to him, locked together at the joint by some invisible knot. “Take me. My penance must be paid, for I have unleashed a curse upon this vessel the likes of which you will never be rid of.”

He’d lost it then. Had utterly lost it, collapsing across her knees and into chuckles that wracked his form until his words had left him and his breaths had come in shorter gasps than they had minutes ago. And she laughed with him ‘til her face had gone pink with mirth and, longing to see how deep that flush went, his patience had run dry.

So, he’d kissed her. He’d kissed her as her laughter bubbled against his lips, the feeling akin to what he’d always imagined sipping a champagne worth a year of his wages would be like.

She pulled back, still flushed. Still grinning. “You are nowhere near as stuffy as you appear.”

“Says the noble with the nipple rings.”

“You have them too!”

“I never said I didn’t!”

Her fingers found their way to his piercings.

Quite mysteriously, his fingers had already found their way to hers. “So, is this some parlor trick to the upper class? You whip them out at parties and everyone ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’?”

“You haven’t the foggiest as to what people do at parties, do you?”

“Not those kinds of parties, no. The parties I’ve been to involve punch and prostitutes, not punctuality and pompous pricks.”

“You have such nice prose for a pirate.”

He twisted one of the rings under his fingers, earning a hiss not quite of pain for his trouble. “I like to read when I can. And we’re not ‘pirates’. We’re-”

“You sail on ships, you have a full commander-captain-sailor hierarchy, and contracts are the only way anyone keeps you all from stopping all trade, or impregnating the masses or absconding with everyone else’s children, if only to make them into more sailors. You’re fucking pirates.”

“That- that’s entirely not what being a Naut is about!”

“But you can’t deny it’s in the subscript.”

He sighed, rubbing his eyes with his free hand, half debating on twisting again with the other, just to get her to stop talking. But that… that would have been ruder than his usual.

“So, how many thousand kids do you have, Captain?”

“Why do you need to know?”

“Call it morbid curiosity.”

“…Then, none. And don’t give me the lecture.”

But her look was one of wonder, not of pity. _“_ _ Really?” _

“Well, what about you? Just careful with tea or…?”

“How do you know I don’t prefer women? What if you’re the first man I’ve been with?”

Nearly enough to send him into hysterics again. But she interrupted with a twist with both hands that turned his gasp to a moan he caught inside his throat. When he spoke, his voice came out far huskier than he’d intended. “Lady De Sardet, if you can say that mine is the first cock you’ve ever handled, then I can go around declaring myself a virgin.”

“I… thank you. I think.”

He’d certainly meant it as a compliment. “And… I can’t imagine your family was horribly fond of finding that out. Or… about how you found it out. Nobility tends to be big on ‘bloodline’.”

“They… really are.”

A sensitive topic. Perhaps he should-

“I just think… society tells you to live a certain way, especially as a woman. ‘Wear this dress’, ‘don’t drink that liquor’, ‘look forward to your marriage and becoming some child factory for an old man who bores you’… why should I want that? Why should I believe that I’m broken because they say-”

He put a hand to her cheek. “Don’t. Fuck them.”

She didn’t correct him on his language, this time. But she did wordlessly stare.

“Fuck what society tells you. Forge your own path. The…” More details than he’d like to divulge, but the situation called for it, and… “The admirals don’t hate me because I don’t… erm… abide by your pirate definition; they appreciate me because I’m a damned good sailor. Because what defines me is my wit, not my ability to fill some quota. And… if you live life your own way, I think… I think eventually you’ll find the people that will appreciate you for it too.”

She looked to him, every star he’d ever navigated by held within her eyes. 

And then, she blinked and turned away, and they were gone. “Maybe someday, I will.”

“I know you will. If a crafty bitch like you can’t get what she wants, what hope is there for the rest of us?”

A gasp. 

With a flurry of blankets, she shoved him backwards, pinning him to his bed with her hands on his shoulders. “I’ve half a mind to take down all the sails of your boat when next you sleep and strangle you with them.”

A gasp of his own. “Those take hours to rig! You wouldn’t dare!”

“Keep teasing me, Captain, and we’ll see about that.”

He might see yet, because quitting teasing, quitting her… not something he had in him to do. 


	4. Almost Tender

Yes Another two weeks, and everyone had recovered from their illness. He would miss the peace the bug had brought with it, but not the stress that had come with manning a ship with half a crew. 

Well-founded woes, it had turned out. A squall had caused him to miss the last game night for fear the second officer would capsize them in his zeal to speed through it. Blistering impatience: the reason why the second officer was second, despite having more years on the sea than his first mate. And after his attempt to kill them all, or worse, wrecked the damned ship, the greenhorn fourth-in-command had learned firsthand why all the regular crewmen had warned him the first day of his transfer not to piss off the captain. 

Not that he’d thrown the man overboard, as his crew had said he would. 

He… may have strapped him to the bow for a few miles.

…Maybe.

What the admiral didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

But, come next game night, the first, second, and third officers all joined him, Cabin Boy, the boatswain, and their guests about a table, and all wrongdoing had been forgotten. Their usual poker again, a game many had dropped in and out of throughout the night. A game many knew how to play, that he’d taught his whole crew to bring in some extra coin in ports, always exchanged for some rum or books or sweet treats before leaving.

And they’d made him proud, with Shawna knocking out the would-be governor of New Sérène in the first hand, and Salem, Hera, and Cabin Boy then turning upon the rest. 

Cabin Boy had a name, but ever since their guests had found him kidnapped by his own father, his title was all anyone had called him by. A joking sort of recompense; one couldn’t abandon their post for days and get away scot-free. The absolute least he could do was embarrass the lad, so that, he did.

The Coin Guard- Kurt, the man had a name too- had quit at five shots and fifty gold in the hole before he, ‘passed out, pissed himself, and lost his coin purse to commissioned pirates’. 

He’d flipped Kurt a rather rude gesture for his use of the term ‘pirate’ but had gained a begrudging sort of respect for him for leaving. That saying about old dogs not being able to learn new tricks wasn’t so true after all.

Two of the outsiders gone, his crewmen had gained a zeal to knock out the third and had all bet themselves down a week’s wages that he’d have to fudge back into the logs later. …By losing to either himself or his rival, of course. To the illustrious, the magnificent, the woman-with-wholly-shit-luck-probably-half-from-cheating: De Sardet.

And in the end, as usual, it had come down to him and her, dueling until the early hours of the morning with her not quite managing to read all his bluffs, and him not quite willing to point out every instance of her cheating lest the crew hang her from the yard. In the end, his boatswain had retired back to the deck, and the rest to their cabins, as he and De Sardet had retired to his.

Her question tonight had been about rope, and again, he’d answered by example. As he’d thought, her knots had left something to be desired. His had left pink lines around her wrists that he soothed with a salve from his bedside drawer and minuscule circles rubbed with his thumb.

The brush burn wouldn’t have been so bad, had she not struggled against him so. Not that he’d minded that she’d struggled. Not that she hadn’t noticed he hadn’t minded. A fact which had seemed to make her resist all the more, even if she’d lived to regret it.

“You weren’t kidding about the knots.”

He couldn’t help but shake his head, a smile creeping onto his lips despite himself. “Never doubt a sailor’s ability with rope.”

“So I’ve learned. Though I can’t say I expected the aftercare. You’re being almost tender with me.”

He froze, his heart thudding in his chest, hers under the pad of his finger. “I’m a man, not an animal. I’d do the same for anyone.”

“Of course, Captain. And I’m sure you keep letting me in here because of contractual obligation alone.”

At that, he pulled away. 

Because it brought up more questions. Too many questions that rose with a gnawing in his chest. Too much, too soon, and… 

Why did he keep letting her into his cabin?

Why had he concealed her cheating from the crew?

Why did he find himself enjoying the company of a member of one of the wealthiest families in the Merchant Congregation, a veritable cesspool of wealth hoarders?

When would she prove herself as no more than the entitled, coddled fool that her upbringing said she should be?

What was wrong with him lately?

But the sound of a marble rolling across the floor broke the tension, and instead of seeking answers to one of his thousand questions, he snickered. 

She cracked a smile once more. “A joke. A poor one, forgive me.”

“I’d rather not.”

“You mean, you’d rather ‘Nau-”

He clapped a hand over her mouth. 

She nipped at his fingers until he relented. 

Though it didn’t hurt, he pulled away because though her tongue had been on his hands, his chest held the oddest sort of tingle. “You dirty wench. We’re at the stern, you know, and I think, did I try hard enough, I could stuff you through that porthole. We’ve both seen how well you deal with my knots; you’d be lost in the wake for a bad pun. But please, do continue.”

“So, you’re going to push me out the literal asshole of the back of your boat, into the wash, for-”

‘Wash’?

‘_Wash’? _

“Fucking hell, woman!” He shoved his head onto his pillow, then the pillow over his head. “‘Porthole!’ ‘Aft!’ ‘Ship!’ ‘Wake!’ Is- is this some game to you? Do you test my patience because you can?”

Her thighs shaking with her giggles, she tried to yank him free of his hiding spot. Failed miserably because, strong as she was, she hadn’t been wrestling with rigging all her life, so she wasn’t as strong as him. She settled for squiggling herself down the bed until she hid under his pillow too. 

A private grotto, just for the two of them.

“I tease you, Captain, because a deadpan stare from those lined eyes makes me weak in the knees. Because you’re the only person I’ve found, at sea or no, who can keep up with me. You don’t give me an inch.”

“Oh, I’ll give you a damned-”

She wrested the pillow from his grasp, glaring with her eyes but grinning with her lips. “‘Bad puns’, he says? Now who’s the one with the bad puns, hmm? You filthy fu-”

A knock. “Green Blood? That you?”

She paused mid-slap, the pillow flopping onto his head.

He froze, mid-breath, his heart pounding for the third time tonight. 

Would she tell? Flaunt… whatever this was… in front of her friend for a laugh? Spread it to his crew so they’d tease him for his crush on someone unavailable, and-

Sure as the tide, if he didn’t shove her overboard like he’d been joking of doing, this woman would kill him.

“Yes, Kurt, it’s me. Can I help you?”

“Can I help _ you? _ What are you doing in the Captain’s cabin?”

Her eyes searched his face but a moment before finding whatever she’d been looking for. “I couldn’t sleep, so I headed up here, where the Captain was so kind as to entertain me. We started playing Mother’s old checkers game; a poor idea on my part. The ship heeled a bit starboard, and the game pieces went all over. It’s a mess in here.”

She knew the proper terms. She knew nautical terms, and she purposefully didn’t use them to piss him off.

He should have strapped her to the bow as an example, not his second officer. The same trick wouldn’t be nearly as intimidating a second time. He could drag her to the crow’s nest, then strand her up there. Actually dangle her out one of the larger portholes.

De Sardet urgently motioned for him to join in.

He could let her dig this hole alone. Revenge for defacing the Sea Horse by calling Her ‘a boat’ numerous times when she knew better, and…

But the entreating look she gave him…

He sighed. A real one that happened to fit into the conversation. “Understandably, I wasn’t happy. I’ll be finding marbles for years.”

Long after she’d gone.

…Why had that thought hurt?

The handle turned. “Do you two need help? I can-”

A cry from both their voices: “No!”

De Sardet’s eyes went wide with horror, and though her mouth moved, nothing came out.

Up to him. An excuse. Quickly. “They’ve all stopped on the other side of the door, bodyguard; if you open it, they’ll be lost to the halls forever. My crew may actually kill you.”

Her panic evaporated, she mouthed a ‘yar har’ at him.

He tied a knot with nothing in mid-air.

“Ugh, what a mess! Well, looks like it’s up to the two of you; those things are a menace. Scream if you decide you need help; I should be able to hear you.”

He bit his lip to keep from commenting, a gesture that earned him an actual whack across his head with the pillow.

“We will, Kurt, thank you!”

“Good luck, Green Blood!”

“Hell, we’ll need it.”

And only when the laughter and footsteps had receded fully down the hall, did he allow himself to breathe again. Several moments they stayed in silence, with her leaning on the wall and him collapsed upon his bed. Moments in which she braced against the wood, her chest heaving, her eyes pressed shut. 

A posture he’d love to take advantage of.

But… damn him, he had questions. “Why didn’t you tell Kurt? If you so enjoy antagonizing me, that would have been the way to do it.”

“I…” She sank down the wall, the serpent on her thigh undulating in the lantern’s light. “I don’t know. It seemed bad form, I suppose.”

“‘Bad form’ hasn’t stopped you before.”

She nearly whacked him again, only hesitating at the last second.

So, he snatched his pillow back from her, trapping it within his arms underneath him.

“Have I lost pillow privileges because I called it ‘wash’, not ‘wake’?”

The reminder was enough for him to bury his head in the blankets once more. “I hate you.”

“Do you really, Captain? Because from here-”

She didn’t whack him with her hand or attempt to steal the pillow back. Didn’t find a stray marble and pelt him with it. Didn’t run off to slack all the sails.

She grabbed him straight by the balls.

The noise that escaped him bordered upon obscene.

“-it doesn’t seem like you hate me at all.”

Of course, she’d go and do a damned thing like that. Because it was nearly dawn, nearly time for them to part, and, did she admit it or not, ‘bad form’ was such a part of her repertoire that it wouldn’t be out of place tattooed across her muscled shoulders.

And now… he couldn’t go the day like this, couldn’t walk up on deck hard with want, his mind anywhere but the sea. He… could do this on his own. Could take care of it after she left. Could finish himself like he’d done many times before he’d started attending game nights. 

Before he’d started playing these games with her. 

Her fingers danced higher, sliding over his ass. Up his spine. Behind his ear, once more looping in the piercing. “Could you be a little late today?”

He… couldn’t.

It would break boundaries. Not hers or the Nauts’, but his own. Whoever laid in his bed never got in the way of work. “I need to be on deck.”

“The sun’s not up yet. You’d be early.”

“I know, but I want-”

“So, you don’t ‘need’ to be on deck yet, but you want to.”

She…

Yes.

Yes, he wanted to. 

Because being on deck was comfortable. Something he knew like the back of his hand. Something he’d done since he’d been old enough to walk. 

When the spokes of a wheel slid through his fingers, when the wind rustled his hair, there were no questions. No doubts in his mind. He was in control. Down here, with her, it sometimes seemed questions and doubts were all he had, and any self-control he’d once possessed had long fluttered out his porthole.

On deck, he was Captain. Gruff. Unyielding. 

But here… she drew something from him that he wasn’t sure he liked. Something he hadn’t felt since he was a boy who hadn’t yet known his place in the world, who hadn’t yet known the callousness to expect from it. Hadn’t yet learned that classes divided, and people abided by them at all costs. That the haves and the have-nots mixed like water and pitch, water his parents had tossed him into without so much as an apology or a thought as to what their actions would mean for him.

He had been Sea-Given, contracted to the Nauts before he could remember anything else. And he’d learned to swim, had learned to sail, had taken to it as well as a damned fish would. But though he’d found family amongst the sharks, he couldn’t say he wasn’t bitter about being thrown to them in the first place.

Especially because his parents had kept…

A worse topic for a worse time.

Like it or not, some pathetic, long-buried part of him looked at her and wondered what might have been. Some part of him resented that she’d grown up with a silver spoon in her mouth, in a class that had no cares for what they did to other people, and him… he’d had to fight for everything he had.

And like the boy who’d stood on deck every port, watching everyone else bustle about their normal lives, she made him wonder how he could have so many people around him and yet feel so alone.

Even if she weren’t like the rest of them, _that_ was a feeling she’d never understand. Part of being rich, after all, was never having empathy or sympathy for anything or anyone.

De Sardet took her hand away, brushing it through a lock of hair that had escaped his ponytail. “I… I didn’t mean to worry you. It’s all right; I’ll go. I might rib on you for fun, but I never want to make you uncomfortable. I’m sorry if I did.”

‘Sorry’.

He spun and snatched her by the wrist as she slid to the end of the bed. “Stay.”

“What?”

“Stay. I can’t spare long, but… you never take long anyhow.”

A smile dawned on her face that held as much light as the sunrise. She crawled back up the bed and laid next to him, that wondrous grin never leaving. Growing a little lidded, maybe. “I never take long with _ you _. I swear, some of the men on land don’t even know what a clitoris is, let alone where to find it.”

He let out a little chuckle. Brought her by the hips up to his face, kissing all the way up her thigh. “Those piteous land bastards… all the more for me, then.”

And as he dove in, her hands fell backwards, one finger looped through that ring she did so love to play with. “All the more for you, Captain. Mmm, I… all the more for you.”


	5. ...Was This Still Just a Game?

The funny thing about a craving was the more one indulged it, the more it seemed to grow. Something that had started as an indulgence became a ravenous need. A want for a drink became an unslakable thirst. An itch to gamble soon lost one house and home.

Addiction. A heinous, creeping disease that sailors seemed most susceptible to catching. 

Himself included.

It had hardly been three days. ‘A fucking Tuesday,’ his calendar had scolded him, ‘get ahold of yourself, you shit.’

And still, he’d spent his every waking moment and half the ones asleep consumed by the thought of her.

So, Wednesday, he’d given in, and he’d ended up outside her door, fully dressed, but feeling quite exposed. He’d remembered to tidy his cabin and replace the empty bottle of rum in his cabinet. He’d remembered his hat, so he looked like he’d come from deck. That Kurt usually stomped upstairs for some fresh air before bed. That her cousin, the one whose privilege wasn’t an act, was always long asleep by the time the stars peeked through the falling sun. 

But he hadn’t remembered to bring his damned courage with him, because minutes he’d stood here without the bravery to knock.

Hell, she’d done it. She’d knocked on his door many nights ago, not knowing if he’d answer, if he’d receive her. Then again, she’d had far more in her system than half a cigar and two shots of rum. 

He had to get it over with. Worst case, she wasn’t there, and he retreated to his cabin for too much of both a handle and his hand… again. Not disappointing in the slightest. 

She was a noble; they couldn’t be counted upon for anything. So, he had to expect nothing of her, because nothing could leave one wanting if one expected nothing. Besides, it was only sex. Physicality and nothing more, like asking for someone to crack his back after spending a day hunched over maps and star charts. Nothing more.

…Nothing more.

He raised a fist to knock. Silently dropped it to his side, just as fast.

Damn him to the depths; what had this woman done to him?

Enough to make him knock for real, his voice coming out far harsher than he’d intended. “De Sardet! A word?”

He cringed. Covered his mouth with his hand.

She wasn’t awake. Wasn’t up and…

Footsteps.

Shit, shit, shit-

She threw the door open, a book in hand, her hair, a mussed mess, slung over her shoulder. And she looked a little tired, a little worn, but not unhappy to see him as her gaze flitted from his head to his feet and back again. “Captain! How can I help?” Another beat and her brows furrowed as she stepped from her room. “Is everything all right? Trouble on deck?”

And she thought there was…

_ Fuck. _“No, no trouble. Was finishing up a last patrol before bed, happened to walk by, and I only wondered if…” Quickly. Something obvious to her, but not to anyone who may be listening. No flirting. No cheeky puns. “…you’d like to make another attempt at checkers. Winds are calm lately. Horrid for sailing, might add another few days to the voyage-” Thankfully. No, not thankfully! He’d have to take a detour through a stormy strait to get them there on time. “-but we should have less heel than usual. Less of a chance of you losing your marbles all over my cabin.”

All right, he hadn’t been able to help himself on that one. 

And she’d noticed, biting a finger inside her grin. “Um… of course. I- yes, let me get the board.”

And so, she had.

And so, they’d retired to his room, the door barely shut and locked when he’d attacked her, stripping their clothes off only enough to oil himself and enter her. And though she started off enthusiastic, if shocked beyond words, it turned out that she was as ravenous as him. Nails dug into his back, heels into his hips, teeth into his neck enough for him to be grateful that his coat covered up to his nape. It wasn’t flirty and fun like their usual encounters, it was frenzied and frantic and… everything he’d needed. 

When they’d finished, they’d collapsed upon his bed, and even some minutes later they laid there. On his part, at least, from a want not to disturb her. Not to prompt her to move because… here, now, with him… what a sight she was. 

Sweat laid over her body like morning dew. Bite marks blemished her shoulders from his every attempt to keep quiet, a testament to his fraying self-control. Her hair stuck every which way, more a snarl of seaweed washed ashore than its usual tamed, tied twirl. And the sea serpent upon her thigh seemed to swim in the little light that reflected off the ocean, a pursuant, predatory thing that might devour him whole. 

Here…

He never wanted to leave. “De Sardet…”

“Yes?”

A secret he’d never tell. “What were you doing in your cabin?”

She hesitated a moment, silence ringing throughout the room. “Reading.”

‘Reading’? “Did you sneak a lantern aboard? There’s a reason I’m the only one that has one; fire at sea is no laughing matter.”

“Nor would I laugh at it. No lantern. Only natural light.”

She read by the stars? What in the hell…?

“It’s not bad. If you squint enough, you can make out the words.”

Her and few others. “You’ve good eyesight, then. You’d make an excellent night navigator, if you’re any good with mathematics, or night’s watch if you’re not. Precious few of those in the Nauts. Most enjoy sticking to their usual sleep schedule.”

“I’ve always enjoyed math and science. The answer is right or it’s wrong; there’s no room for personal bias or interpretation.” She turned towards him, laying upon her side, the rings upon her chest glinting in the moon’s glow. “But you’re not one of the many who ‘enjoy sticking to their usual sleep schedule’, are you? You do a bit of everything.”

“I’m Captain. If I don’t have my hands in everything, I’m doing it wrong. Besides, I like it that way. Always a new task. I never have a worry of growing bored.”

“And would you?” Her and her damned questions. “Are you the type to tire of a similar scenario, night after night?”

Spoken generally, but only a fool would have missed her intent. “Hardly. Another thing done wrong if it’s the same, night after night. I certainly hope I haven’t bored you.”

Enough words to make her blush and glimmer like mother of pearl, struck from the inside of a shell in which one would never think to see it. “Dear Captain, how could I ever grow bored of you?” 

Enough words to make him swallow like he’d a cork stuck in his throat. 

Because they couldn’t be true. And even if they were, it wouldn’t matter.

They were halfway to the island. She wouldn’t get the chance to grow bored of him.

And… was this still just a game?

It had to be.

…But was it?

Her shine faded before long, dampened by some gloom come in with the lack of wind. Or from him, more likely.

He stood and shut his porthole anyhow, returning to a woman who refused to look at him. Put a comforting hand upon her shoulder. “What is it? You can talk to me. I promise I won’t bite ‘less you ask.”

She smiled, another beauty that didn’t stay. Knotted her hands in her gnarled hair. “He… he wants me to help. Constantin. With the governance in New Sérène.”

“You do know that ‘no’ is a sentence all its own.”

A sigh and she rolled onto her back. “I can’t tell him no! The look he gives me makes me feel like I’ve kicked a puppy.”

“Probably why he does it.”

A good thing looks couldn’t actually kill, because her glare would have ended all his dreams of one day making Fleet Commander. “May I continue, or are you going to keep ribbing on my poor cousin?”

“Your cousin’s hardly, ‘poor’.” But with that, even De Sardet had reached her limit for teasing, and the hand he extended to her shoulder was the only thing that kept her from leaving his bed. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop. I know people are… people can be funny about their families.”

A beat of silence, save the song of the sea.

Sometimes it seemed that everything that lived on land was a thing he couldn’t understand. “But why, if you don’t mind me asking? I thought you were different. You don’t speak of your family with any great respect, but the one who’s late to dock from drink, you hold in high esteem?”

“Constantin…” Another difficult topic. For a bit, De Sardet shirked his gaze, unable to find the words. “He… um… he listened to me. He was… there for me when no one else was, when no one else wanted to be, and, likewise, I was there for him, I will be there for him, I must, I-” A sigh. “Constantin may not have understood me, but he tried. Always stuck up for me against my uncle. Against my mother. He’s a little shit, but… he’s my little shit. Do you… do you know what I mean?”

So, quite literally his entire crew, though he couldn’t say he was near as forgiving with them as De Sardet was with her cousin. He would have never run around a port in search of anyone, especially if their excuse for lateness had been testing their liver function and getting in bed with the wrong people. And, though his entire crew had been born at sea and stripped from their families or contracted to the Nauts at a young age, he couldn’t say he’d ever heard any of them bitch so much about their parents as her cousin did. But… not his ship, not his squeaky winches. Flimsy a relation as it was…

A hand on his shoulder. A pleading look in her eyes. She desperately seemed to have a want not to be alone in this.

He nodded towards the crew’s quarters as, if on cue, a shout even audible from here rose from them. Something about someone stealing a sock and doing something rather obscene into it. “Have you met my crew in the months we’ve been at sea? Any of them at all?” 

And though she rolled her eyes, she gave a quickly falling grin, and her words flowed like water once more. “If only I had your patience. I’m just… not nervous, I’m… supposed to negotiate between the Thélème and the Bridge Alliance, to treatise with the Natives and the Nau- and your people, and… and…” She collapsed onto her back once more, sighing into the sea air. “It’s not as if that’s something I haven’t done before but being here at sea… it reminds me how sick I was of it. How sick I _am_ of it. I’m so tired of bullshitting everyone and kissing more ass than a two-bit hooker to appease people’s egos. Is it… is it…?”

“Spit it out, you can do it.”

And though she whacked him on the arm, something other than irritation twinkled within her eyes. “I’ve twenty-five years in me. Is it too late to be Sea-Given?”

She would voluntarily…?

Did she want to…?

With him…?

She offered her wrists to him as she had the other night. “How about, before we dock, you tie me up and throw me in the hold? Then, you make some excuse about the Congregation owing a child, and… bam. Easy.”

“So, you want me to be the villain? Like a pirate, I should kidnap some fair lass and snatch her away from all her responsibilities?”

Another glare that he couldn’t help but find arousing. “You didn’t answer my question about the Sea-Given.”

Sea-Given stopped being taken at six, but anyone could join the Nauts voluntarily, regardless of age. A sailor was a sailor and, would they put in the work to catch up, they were always welcomed. But nobility was hardly cut out for sailing. 

A joke then, to throw her off the scent. “If ever you let me toss you overboard, we can find out.”

Her jaw dropped open. “So, they _ do _throw you overboard if you’re not Sea-Born? Like in all the legends? And you can only join if you don’t drown? If the ‘tide doesn’t take you’?”

A fairy tale. One she seemed particularly enamored with.

He shrugged, barely holding his face neutral. Barely not bursting into snickers. A fairy tale as ridiculous as those of Nauts navigating the seas by magic. “Most people can swim, if pressed. Adults like you though… they’d likely bind your hands first. Bit more of a challenge that way; can’t have the weak ones joining us. We need no anchor to hold us back. So if signing up with us is truly what you want… I hope you’re good at righting yourself in water.”

He could have shoved a full coconut in her mouth and not had it scrape her teeth. 

“I… can’t tell if you’re being serious, Captain.”

Drawing inwards, he ghosted breath across her lip, her eyes fogging over as cold glass would. “Then, perhaps you should spend more time with me instead of that cousin of yours.” But as soon as the words left his mouth, he froze. Too much. Too much, too soon. “Or perhaps, you’ll never know.”

And in case his second statement hadn’t been enough distraction from his hesitation, he started in upon her once more, planting kisses up her neck. Switching to tongue when he hit her jaw.

Still seeming floored, she pushed him backwards.

“Not in the mood? Or you have more Naut questions?”

“Yes and yes, but no. I… really? Now?”

Ah. “Should I not want you again?”

Her light bout of laughter lit his cabin and his chest aflame. “You should, but… I didn’t think you’d have it in you for a while. Earlier was… intense, I… thought you might want a break.”

He climbed atop her, straddling her hips, gently pushing apart her legs. A physical question to go with his spoken one. “Do you?”

But she welcomed him with a shake of her head, an enraptured look upon her face.

“Good.” He drew a knee up the inside of her thigh and a shiver from the woman below him. “Because, my dear Lady…the last thing I want right now is a break.”

* * *

Once more hadn’t been enough.

Twice hadn’t either.

But after the third time, after they’d passed out, then woke, only to have at each other once more, they’d both collapsed, spent and sweating under the rising sun.

Morning.

He wasn’t late yet, but nearly.

A notion that had occurred to her as well as she pushed herself to the edge of the bed, slung her knees over the side, and promptly crumpled into a pile on his floor.

And she laughed.

He laughed. Until he’d made to stand to help her, and he’d ended up in a similar state to her. Then, he’d nearly died. Had half asphyxiated with his cackles, not that the pants he’d near stuffed into his mouth to muffle himself had helped.

But as she’d fallen first, she regained herself first, dragging herself along with short nails scratching on the floorboards until her head peeked from under the edge of his bed. “So, our excuse is …rum?”

He managed a nod. Pushed himself up with more arm than leg strength and finally stood, not even stumbling. 

…Much. 

“Rum and blackjack.” A dangerous combination. The closest he’d ever come to blacking out. “A shot for every hand over twenty-one.”

A game in which, he held the sneaking suspicion, De Sardet could give him a run for his money.

But now, she gave him a thumbs-up and offered her hands. A plea for help.

He could deny her. Leave her on his floor for as long as it took her to stand on her own. Make some quip about ‘needing no anchor.’

But, like the scoundrel she was, she’d resorted to pouting at him, so sap that he was, he pulled her up with him, her hands clambering all over his body the entire way. It wasn’t until she reached his shoulders, grinning and grasping onto them for dear life, that the morning light truly revealed the number he’d done upon her. 

Nail marks down her back. Bite marks on her collarbone. All red and angry and far more noticeable than they’d been last night. All red, save a hickey at the base of her neck that was a solid mess of blue and purple.

And in that moment, even if someone had pressed a muzzle to his head and asked him, he wouldn’t have been able to answer if he was more impressed with himself or appalled.

She staggered over to her clothes and somehow pulled them on. Turned to him when she’d finished, presenting herself with spread arms. Spread arms and… a very visible, veritable collection of love marks from her breastbone to the top of her neck, bared by the cut of her shirt. “Well? How do I look?”

Stars, he needed to get ahold of himself.

“You… erm…” He crossed to his closet, his knees protesting only slightly, and tossed her one of his older jackets from when he’d been a mere lieutenant. A smaller jacket, too small for him now, but it might fit her. Hopefully, it would fit her. Otherwise, his story would have to be that they’d both fought off some rather handsy kraken together. “You look like you won a coat off me, something you asked for in your drunken stupor.”

Something she looked all too happy to have not actually done. “Well, I’ll be damned; I’ve done something good while blacked out, for once! I’ve been a little chilly on the nights I’ve been on my own, this is wonderful.” And, true to form, she buttoned it all the way, securing her scarf about the collar and tucking her hands in the hip pockets. “Better?”

_ Shit. _

_ Yes. _

No. 

No, no, no, no.

Worse, because it covered up everything horrid he’d done to her, but the fit on that coat was… “Perfect. And now, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

A frown formed at the corners of her mouth. “Something in the regulations against sleeping with the crew?”

“No, but…”

Slowly, her gaze swept about his body. Slowly, her frown turned to a knowing smile. “_ Ah. _ Yes, you’re right; I’d best be going.” And she took herself and her shit-eating grin to his door, only pausing when her hand had reached the handle. “Um… good luck tucking that.”

“_ Fuck _you, De Sardet.”

A low, half-snorted giggle escaping her, she shut the door behind her. Opened it once more, sticking only her head back in. Dropped her voice to a whisper. “Not ‘til Friday, Captain.”

“I hate you.”

“I hate you too.”

With her admission of anti-affection, she left, stranding him in the center of the room, stark naked and not quite pissed off but certainly frustrated. A state he hadn’t been in since he’d spent time with a man in Alliance territory and, after finding out he would set sail the next day, the man had burned all his clothes. His reward for his honesty. Not a place he’d thought he’d find himself a second time, that was for damned certain.

So, being someone with ample skill in problem-solving but not much creativity, he repeated his actions from the last time he’d been in this situation. First, he took a double shot of rum, then blundered about, throwing on whatever clothes he could find that would cover up… things, then finally, he went back to the rum for its closing statement.

Its closing statement being, ‘Vasco, you fucking idiot, you’ve done it again.’

And, like last time, he’d made his way onto deck in a shirt too long and too loose and undergarments far too tight, his breath smelling of rum, but a smile upon his face.


	6. Nobility

With Friday had come more poker, and more people had gotten in on the game this time. More fun, more camaraderie with his crew cheering at every coin he took from their guests, but also more prying eyes. Quite a few had stayed until he had called it a draw in the wee hours of the morning, including her body guard who, damn him, seemed to be both starting to learn to control his liquor and starting to suspect that something both secretive and heinous occurred after cards.

Slow on the uptake, but not such a fool, after all. Or, perhaps Kurt had merely been picking up some habits from Lauro. Only time and the mercenary possibly developing a stomach made of iron would tell.

He couldn’t say the same for that ‘Constantin’. Three shots and the man had been done for, narrowly avoiding being knocked out in the first round again by a lucky river that had given him four-of-a-kind. The river had let Constantin beat even his flush, a turn of events that had bothered him for some reason, though he hadn’t been able to put his finger on why.

Since Shawna, Flavia, and Lauro had all insisted upon following him back to his cabin, brimming with tips on how to beat the ‘savage settler’, the menace herself hadn’t been able to sneak back with him. And the entire thing had been an exercise in futility, because Kurt wasn’t protecting De Sardet from anything she wouldn’t be doing without him, and he’d already learned how to beat her at poker. But pretending he’d been taken by some hellish fever and stripping in front of his crew would only work once, so he had held his hand to his chest and had swallowed his pride yet another night. 

It was always worth it. Or… it usually was. 

He’d left his door unlocked. Had crawled into bed nude as he always did and had read by lantern light instead of the dim depths of the clouded sky for some… hour. Alone. 

‘… _ For no man sails that has not lost a friend, _

_ That has not lost a brother to her bite… _ ’

Even his favorite verse couldn’t ease his jitters.

Was she not coming? 

Had she found something better to-

“By the gods, I thought he’d never leave.”

And a habit of swallowing his nerves like every other feeling was the only thing that kept him from pelting his book at his visitor’s head. A few deep breaths calming his pattering heart, he tucked the book beside his bedside table before he concussed the poor woman with it. “How much has he caught on?”

De Sardet made a face that said nothing good. “I… um… think we should switch up our schedule.”

“That bad?”

“No… um…”

Her lips said, ‘no’, but the fumble of her words and the way she couldn’t look him in the eyes said ‘oh, hell yes’.

His raised brow was enough to pull the truth from her. 

“I told him we were only playing games, but he felt the need to warn me about ‘sailors and diseases’… I didn’t have the heart to tell him if I haven’t caught it and gotten over it by now, I’m probably immune. But it doesn’t matter. He never thinks anyone is good enough for me.”

Enough to bring laughter to his lips. “The merc for hire doesn’t think-”

De Sardet waved her hand about as if to shoo one of the many flies that buzzed about dock. But they were far from land. “No, no, no, not Kurt, Constantin.”

Ah.

Of course. Her beloved cousin, so endeared to her that he gained the ability to give her advice in matters of rom…

Of… sex. 

Of sex. 

She slipped over to him, sitting upon the edge of his bed, one hand splayed over his thigh. “You really don’t like him, do you?”

“He reminds me of someone.” Memory enough to sour his mood. 

“Really? Who have you known that has reminded you of Constantin? I can’t say I’ve met any Nauts like him.”

Not a Naut.

His brother.

The Nauts kept records of all the Sea-Given in case, as it had been with Jonas, years later, someone came calling. Records that had come in handy. Records he’d always known about but had been loath to use.

But, after some fifteen years of subtly searching for his family, he’d finally had enough. It had started with a night of drink and cards. He’d won a round with a full boat, kings over queens, someone had made a joke about him having two mothers, and it had occurred to him once more that he had none. 

The rum had whispered to do something about it, and, in his inebriated folly, he’d listened. He’d broken into the command office and had rifled through their papers. Had found his.

Something he still wished he’d never done.

When next he’d found himself in Sérène, he’d used his shore leave to reach out to relatives instead of relax, a move that had cost him his girl at the time. And though Bess, or Beth, or whatever her name had been, wasn’t someone he would have stayed with forever, still it hadn’t been worth it. Hell, passing up an ale and a game of darts with his crew wouldn’t have been worth what he’d found.

He’d met his brother in the tavern, a man both shorter and slighter of frame, who, despite having access to hot water and perfumes and baths, somehow managed to look dirty. His brother hadn’t worn the summered bronze he himself took on when he spent a while in the southernmost ports, nor the spring peach he wore most times that made him popular with the upper class. No. Despite bearing only a few more years than him, his brother’s skin held a jaundice that he’d only ever seen on old men who spent too many nights drinking away too many problems. And the thing that had struck him most of all was: what the hell kind of problems did this man have to drink away?

He’d asked. 

A question his brother hadn’t wanted to answer. 

So, just before drinking him under the table, he’d pried it from the man’s cracked lips. 

“Bad business habits”, his brother had said. “I made a few unlucky bets and took a loan from the wrong people.”

“I’m shit at gambling,” he’d meant. “I have everything and don’t appreciate any of it.”

His brother had been blessed with fortune. 

And while he’d sailed from port to port on his own, working his damned ass off for room and board and a little gold he rarely spent, ‘Bastien’ had been awash in coin and silk and had pissed it all away. Yet, the man spoke with confidence of their parents giving him another loan.

“They’ll always have my back,” he’d said. “It’s what family does.”

For his brother, maybe. For the alcoholic, entitled child that his parents had chosen to keep.

But woe was the day that nobility made a good decision.

‘Léandre’, his name would have been. What kind of fools gave their son a shit name like ‘Léandre’? A name that he’d rather drown himself in the morning tide than ever hear across another’s lips in reference to him. 

“Captain?”

Especially across hers. 

But an anchor must have dropped inside him and sank his stomach with it, because a notion whacked him then. Something awful. 

This would never work.

“Something I said?”

Something she represented. Because though he might be able to pass as a noble, and she as a commoner… their guises fell apart under scrutiny. She still bowed to the whims of her family. Verbally, she might rail against them, but the reasoning for her voyage alone, traveling to some new continent as backup for the Prince d’Orsay’s son… an entirely ‘noble’ thing to do. A thing he couldn’t condone.

Stars forbid they let one of their own try to succeed upon merit alone.

“Captain, are you all right?”

No.

Because once he’d seen what secrets the upper class had held, he’d never been able to unsee it for good reason. Time and time again, he’d given them a chance to prove themselves, and time and time again, they’d only proved him right. Whispered, wicked words behind his back from an ex-boyfriend of a wealthy family. A guest he’d transported worth ten times the whole ship, who’d stiffed him after losing in poker. Rich women with painted faces and pretty dresses who snickered and pointed at his crew in the streets if ever they dared to look in their direction.

When he’d met his brother, he’d left without speaking a word as to who he was, as to who he should have been to him. Because to the nobles, the Nauts were an anonymous, necessary devil who they’d murmur to their children would come and steal them in the night if they didn’t behave. 

But Nauts were the only people he could trust. The only people who had never wronged him.

The Nauts were his people, not the nobles. 

And she… was no Naut. She would be no different. 

Nobility never failed to live down to his expectations.

And…

And…

De Sardet had leaned across the table that first round, hadn’t she? Had made the excuse of nearly spilling her drink. She’d leaned across the cards, just before Shawna had turned the river and-

“You cheated to keep your cousin in, didn’t you?”

She froze. Then, slowly, a mischievous smirk crept up her face.

She had.

No, no, no, no…

Just like his parents.

‘Family always had each other’s back.’

All this time, Kurt hadn’t been the foolish one. Nor had Constantin. They’d both known exactly what to expect from her. 

“…Maybe I did.” But after a few seconds of soul-wrenching silence, she noticed his sudden surliness and rushed to spill more words from her lips. “But I was late because I was slipping the coins back to your people, for this time and the last. I finally had enough change, and I didn’t before, and-”

“You couldn’t let him lose?”

A spurt of high, feminine laughter. The kind that time with her had shown she only gave when irritated. “He doesn’t so much ‘lose’ as ‘get his ass handed to him by your crew.’”

“Again, you couldn’t let them have that? We too have to bow to the whims of the little rich boy?”

She drew back from him, her brows forming into a canyon. One of the most hazardous places to sail through. “I said I gave back the money.”

Did she  _ really _ …? 

He sat his book aside and pushed himself up. “You think that’s what this is about? You people always think it’s about your money, don’t you? Your money and how everyone else wants it.”

“Captain, I don’t- I- why are you picking a fight with me over this?”

“Why are you cosseting a grown man? Let him make his own damned mistakes; that’s the only way he’ll learn. How old is he, twenty? That’s more than old enough to know better. I learned the ways of the world far younger than that; you want him to remain some stupid boy for the rest of his life?”

“He’s twenty-six!” She dropped her hand to the bed with a slap, a snarl upon her lips. “And, Orphan Edgar, I’m sorry you came from the School of Hard Knocks, but there’s more than one way to-”

How  _ dare  _ she-

Enough for him to stand despite being entirely nude. Just to get some space from her. 

“I didn’t ‘come’ from the ‘School of Hard Knocks’, De Sardet. My family  _ sold _ me into it. And that’s the difference between you and me. Your family kept you and held you to their breast and when you fussed, they threw everything they had at you to save you from ‘pain.’ Mine didn’t. They threw me into it. But ‘pain’ makes you grow, which is why you all act like children. Because stars be damned before any of you ever experience it. Heavens forbid you have to suffer the consequences of your own decisions.”

“You don’t know a damned thing about me!” She stood with him. Closed the distance he’d created, getting into his face in a different way than usual. A different kind of closeness than he’d imagined from her tonight. “So, don’t you talk to me about not knowing pain. I know pain! They may have ‘held me to their breast’, but no one ever tells you how they try to suffocate you that way! To bend you, to break you into what they want-”

“Oh, boo-fucking-hoo. So, you had to spend your teenage years wearing a pretty silk dress that your mother picked out and socializing with her friends at parties. While you were eating off of china and laughing over tea cakes, I was scrubbing decks and gaffing creatures big enough to throw me overboard. Climbing rope and rigging until my hands cracked and bled. I may be able to take a night off now, but that was something I had to earn. Have you ever earned anything? Ever had to put your sweat into-”

“But you’re  _ free! _ ” Her voice turned to a shout as water welled within her eyes, her hands clenching at nothing. “You are out here on the ocean, beholden to no one, and I have nice things, yes, but they tie a chain around me! I am ‘somebody’, a Legate, a diplomat, but only as long as my family wills it so. I-I have to live my life walking this line, trying to tiptoe between being the cloistered nun they want me to be and not losing my mind in the process. I have to-”

“You don’t have to, you want to.”

“I- I have-”

“That’s bullshit!” He knotted a hand into his hair. Took a shaky breath in an attempt to bring some calm back into his body. “It’s a choice! You make a choice everyday to stay there, to stay with them, to stay in that environment. You’ve locked yourself in a prison cell, and now you're crying for the key. Forgive me if I don’t feel sorry for you. Like I said, heavens forbid any choice you make has a consequence. At least you had one.”

“You think I have a choice? Where else have I to go?”

Oh, how laughable. “If you think you’ve nowhere else to go and that you have no other choice, then you’re more naïve than most your kind. But go ahead and tell yourself that you have no agency. All that sticking your head in the sand does is give you a mouthful of seawater when the tide comes in. And it comes for everyone, sooner or later; either you unbury yourself, or you choke. It’s obvious what you’ll do.” 

Silence.

So, of course, he had to dig the knife a little deeper. 

He took a step closer, bathing her in his shadow. “Keep swaddling your cousin like they swaddled you, and one day, you’ll both be very old and very alone. And time will carve up your pretty face like the mind you’ll never use, and because you sold your soul for petty possessions and people to like you, you will have nothing. And it’ll be what you deserve. It’s what you all deserve.”

She swallowed. Wrapped her arms about herself and tore her gaze away, blinking rapidly. “You’re a cruel bastard, you know that?”

…Not the first time he’d heard that phrase from a lover’s lips. But this time brought a wash of shame with it. 

Why? She was a snake like the rest; she deserved his venom.

Didn’t she?

Damn him, he’d let this go on too far.  _ This _ was why he never invited people back to his cabin multiple times. Because he was nothing more than a hopeless idiot who fell fast and fell hard. Because even though he’d been the one to sink his fangs into her, still he had to fight the urge to suck the poison out. “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, Lady De Sardet. And… I think you should leave.”

A phrase that somehow shocked her.

Still, she stood across from him, her gaze jerking over the floorboards with the light that flickered across them. “I… thought you understood me.”

“Fairly certain I do.”

A sniff. She brought her hand to her nose. “I… don’t… we’ve much time until sunrise, can’t we… can’t we talk this out? Fight, then fuck like in the novels; I’m sure we can reach some- some kind of a-”

“I’m not one of your diplomatic targets, my Lady. And I think I’d rather be alone. Long day tomorrow. We’re coming up on a few reefs, which means choppy waters.” Choppy waters if he were twelve, perhaps. “I need some sleep.”

“So… tomorrow? We- we don’t have to-” She made to grab his arm. Hesitated. Dropped her hand and took it in her other one as if she’d only wanted something to hold. “I just want- I thought you wouldn’t judge me, I thought you were dif-”

“Yes, well there’s something you’d best learn hard and fast, something your life wouldn’t have taught you: you can’t always have what you want.”

She swallowed. Forced her eyes shut and let out a shaky breath. “I know. I…” 

Her tongue darted out to coat her lips. Lips that would have been on his, had he been able to keep his damned mouth shut. Had she been able to rise above her birthright, as he had. 

Why did he have to ask about the river? Those fucking things never brought anything good.

“That much, I know. Good night, Captain.”

She turned and left without another word.


	7. Need It Be Something I Said?

They’d passed the week with barely a word between them. No barbs. No cheeky comments. No misuse of nautical terms to get under his skin. It was as if, in the course of a night, she’d become a stranger to him. Perhaps she always had been, and he’d been too taken with her to see it.

But there always came another tide, another wave, another day. Another day at the end of which, he’d pass by her cabin on his last round before bed and hesitate for half a second, some impulse pulling him to knock. Though, it seemed some sea creature had found his self-control and had tossed it back onto deck, because somehow, so far, he’d resisted the urge.

And when game night came around again, he didn’t attend. He’d freed Salem from his night shift at the helm to go instead, just to have some silence. Silence, save the rush of the sea. 

The only thing left in life that was fair. 

A sentiment that non-sailors had called him insane for holding, but those on land, those who feared the sea, were the insane ones. People could pour out more malice in a day than ever lied in a tempest. Disrespect the sea, and she would return it tenfold, but if one held a wariness of her waters, held knowledge of what she could do… she would treat one well. 

Rock them to sleep. 

Send her winds to push one where they needed to go.

Dry their tears. 

That sort of fairness was hardly a rule that applied to many things.

Certainly not to De Sardet, because he’d have to spend another two months looking at her, knowing the scent of that twist of hair, knowing the taste of sea salt upon her skin, and not being able to have her. He’d known taking up with her was a mistake. He’d done it anyway. And this… was what he’d earned.

He’d gone until the tail end of the shift, until switch was due, and dawn was some hour from them, without being disturbed. With the deck all but empty, save a watchman near the beak and Lauro up the Crow’s Nest. A solemn sort of silence. 

And then, a clink of glass hit the wheel, the slosh of liquid swiftly following. For all his imbibing, never let it be said that man wasn’t agile.

“I’ve got the helm, Lauro, not now.”

Another clink. An insistent one, this time.

He sighed. “Fine.”

Time to uncork the Liquor of the Week. 

He took a deep swig and-

Nearly coughed up half a lung.

“You-” What in the hell was in that bottle? Sputtering, he clapped one hand over his mouth, the other still clenched around a spoke of the wheel somehow. “You trying to kill me? What is that piss?”

Lauro gave a hearty laugh, then took a sip himself. No hacking at all, bless that man’s perpetually intoxicated soul. “I offered a sip to Jo- to Cabin Boy, and he said the same, but you too, Captain? Thought you’d do better.”

‘Better?’ With liquid that seemed liable to light his innards aflame and gave him the near-inexorable want to guzzle a pint of the water that surrounded them? 

But, despite his initial protests, the burn on his lips was cathartic. It washed away the memory of a more pleasant feeling. Not that his lookout could ever know. “Fucking hell, Lauro; no one but you could manage to enjoy that.”

“It’s made with love, boss; you’re going to break my heart.”

“You have no heart left, you crazy bastard. Every day, I more so think that drink’s long turned your guts to stew.”

A frown. Another sip. Lauro slightly coughed, this time. Human, after all. 

“But that’s why you’re such a damned good lookout. If everything below your neck is mush, all the more life for your head and eyes.”

His crewman cracked a smile, bringing the bottle down from his lips. “This is why we all like you, Captain. A rocky exterior and a bleeding heart of gold.”

“Oh, shut up, you drunken shit.”

And they shared a long laugh, only breaking when he took a moment to check the heading. 

Still north west, towards Teer Fradee. Where he’d drop De Sardet off and never have to see her again. A relief or a malady? A curse or a blessing? A bit of both, most likely. The sea only knew it would take many nights after the woman had left his company to get her out of his head. 

She’d just seemed so…

He motioned for the bottle.

Lauro laughed all the more, only stopping after a few moments and a double take of his outstretched hand. “Shit, you’re serious! You sure you want…?”

A sip or two wouldn’t do anything horrible, even if it were this cursed, near-ethanol swill. His aim wasn’t to get drunk or buzzed. Not on duty. Just to drive another taste off his tongue, a feat water and rum and jerky and those damned sea biscuits couldn’t seem to do. A taste of salt and sweat settled on tanned skin. And if Lauro’s Liquor of the Week couldn’t do that, nothing would.

“Sometime before the dawn, lookout. Or shall I make you take the helm while I go get my own? Be forewarned: if you manage to find another unmarked reef like last time, I’m keelhauling you.”

And though his threat was about as sincere as a prostitute’s promises of love, the bottle met his hands and its lips met his, bequeathing another sip of tasteless, burning liquor. He managed not to hack up his gullet this time, but not to avoid making a face like he’d gotten a bad oyster. 

Was that…vodka? 

No. 

Gin? 

No, gin held a hint of juniper in… in…

That imprudent- “Are you making _ moonshine _ on my ship?”

Lauro’s eyes went wide as he stumbled backwards, flailing out his arms onto the quarterdeck’s railing to keep from falling. How the man had better balance suspended in the air was a mystery. “'Making’? I would never!”

“Still, you brought it on! Do you know how flammable this is?”

“We’ve got gunpowder below deck! And- And-” Stumbling back over and leaning in, or rather, _ on _ him, Lauro grabbed his arm and the bottle and nearly stuck his nose into his ear canal. “And you have a lantern and smoke out your porthole! Am I supposed to think you care about flammability?”

How in the hell had he seen…?

“But I won’t tell a soul, I promise!” With his free hand, Lauro gestured above them to his usual holdout. “You know me; can see a lot from up there, but I only blab about it when necessary. Comings… goings… personal business ain’t my business. Not even the comings and goings of a certain lady that likes to sneak into your cabin after poker.”

Either the moonshine hit him then, he choked on a bit of spit, or the wind blew some insect extraordinarily far from home down his throat. Which was less humiliating would be up for debate, though having Lauro have to fumble for the wheel while clapping him on the back until he could breathe again was more than enough of a disgrace.

“Didn’t mean to kill you, Captain, sorry! Was just curious why you’re down here tonight and not up there with her.”

“Are you-” Damn him. “You crushing on me, sailor? Is that why you apparently watch my cabin all the time?”

Finally enough to send Lauro into a sputtering fit mid-sip, and for him to wrest back control of the Sea Horse. 

Victory. 

…For now.

“I- didn’t- I don’t- I mean, don’t get me wrong, Captain, you’re pretty, but not my kind of pretty. Got a girl back in-”

“I’ll have you know that half the men I’ve been with say that. ‘I’ve got a wife.’ ‘This doesn’t mean I’m gay’… as if that would be some horrendous thing. I’ve found sexuality is more a sliding scale than the open and shut door everyone seems to want it to be.”

And… that had only made his lookout stop laughing and stare into the sea as if he’d had some horrifying realization.

“But I know about Cordova, Lauro, relax.”

It might be Lauro’s job to know everything about the goings-on on deck, but it was his to know everything about his crew. From Jonas hardly being able to hold a single beer down, to Shawna and her moon rituals, to Flavia and her knitting collection that she stored in a marked crate in the bilge, to Lauro and his wife the nun in San Matheus. If something went on with his crew, he knew of it for everyone’s sake. Personal problems like a gambling debt or a jealous lover capable of sabotage could become the ship’s problem. And the other things… he’d made it this far because of his skill on the seas, yes, but also his suspicious tendencies. The more one knew of someone, the more one could know how trustworthy they were. Knowing who and who not to trust was how one avoided being tossed overboard and washing up as a corpse on some distant shore.

“But, I erm…” A clear of his throat and another sip, and Lauro seemed to have recovered. “I have to say, your cabin is the most interesting place aboard. You know a glass eye rolled out from that hall the other day? Had to be your door; someone wouldn’t keep something like that in deck-side storage. And I thought I was going nuts, but I looked again, and there it was, merrily making its way down deck…”

Those fucking marbles.

“Was yours, wasn’t it?”

He managed a grumble under his breath.

“Aha! It was!” Lauro gave him another unnecessary hit on the back, his hand settling over his shoulder. “Where was it from? Some poor sob that lost a duel to you? Won in an ill-bet card game ashore?”

He could be honest. Tell his crewman a parable of the folly of trusting in others and make him swear to a secrecy he would always keep. But the last thing he wanted to talk about right now was something that grabbed his heart and twisted. “Dueled a pirate captain for the affections of a beautiful woman. Beat him within an inch of his life with my blade and then- out popped his eye. I kept it as a token of his affection and let him live.”

“You know… can never tell if you’re being serious when you go off on these tangents.”

“…And it was all I won from the duel, because as soon as I approached her, the woman dashed off the rocks and back into the sea…”

Lauro shoved him on the shoulder, not enough to knock them off-course, but enough to knock a grin onto his face. “You bastard! It was once! Once I made that mistake, and you never let me live it down!”

“You ran after me on the dock saying, ‘Careful, Captain, she’s got a tail! She’s got a _ tail! _’ How am I supposed to forget that?”

And that was the first and last time Lauro’s Liquor of the Week had been absinthe.

“I just- I- I’m your lookout! On the ship and off. And you tend to go for the ones that get you hurt; I didn’t want you to go for the one that would get you killed.”

How could someone be so endearing and yet so frustrating? “And I appreciate it, I do, but… a _ siren _ _?_ Really? I know that I joke about it, but logically, how would that work? Every illustration has them as fish from the hips down-”

“I don’t know! What if there’s a hole? A hole between the scales that-”

_ Scales? _But then, there’d be lacerations all over his- “Fish fucking and copious cock cuts are near the top of a list of things I don’t want to think about, now or ever. Both topics you’re forcing into my damned head!” 

Lauro gave him a wicked grin. “Payback’s a bitch, Captain.”

Ugh. “I should tell Gustavo to cut your rations. He’ll do it, the bridge troll.”

“You think I care ‘bout-”

“Or he could find out about your box of liquor and promptly throw it overboard.”

A resounding gasp from next to him. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Don’t tempt me, sailor.”

Lauro spent another moment with his face frozen in horror, and then, he was back at his side, jolly once more. “Antics made you smile though. Tonight’s the first time I’ve seen you smile in a week.”

Yes, well…

“I like this one, you know. This ‘De Sardet’. Don’t think I’ve ever seen you as jovial as you’ve been since you two started poker-ing together. Or… whatever happens after poker-ing.”

“Lauro…”

“I heard shouting the other night, but anything’s fixable, right? You should go and beg her apologies for whatever you-”

“Thin ice, lookout. Tread carefully or prepare to sink.”

Silence fell between them, save the creak of the deck and the occasional sip. 

But, as was his nature, his lookout couldn’t leave well enough alone. “She’s nice to us, you know. They’re never nice to us. All us crewmen are nothing to the nobles, but her-”

“We _ are _nothing to her.” With a long, low breath out, his gut churned once more. “She’s only better at hiding it than most. She doesn’t give a shit about any of us. It’s her and her own, and that’s all she’ll ever care about.”

Lauro scoffed. “Then why’s she keep almost knockin’ on your door?”

…What?

“Last three nights, she’s done her usual for sneaking up after poker: she hauls herself over the banister to avoid the creaky step, plunks herself on the stairs to your hall, quiet as a mouse, and then… she stands there for a bit. Never opens the door, but reaches for it a few times, then slinks back down to the guest quarters.”

Did she really…? But why…?

“So, whatever shit-awful thing you said wasn’t enough to put her off entirely. Just erm… thought you should know, Captain. Respectfully, of course. Don’t mean to butt in.” 

And his lookout thought that- “Need it be something I said?”

Lauro shot him a knowing look. Nearly laughed.

Fine, it was usually something he said, but this time… he hadn’t been wrong about De Sardet.

…Had he?

But with the rise of the sun and the swap of the crew came Shawna rubbing his back, dismissing him to slumber. 

A broken slumber, filled with dreams of docking and glass eyes and a sunshine-haired siren that pulled him away from the shore, with skin softer than the finest silk and teeth sharper than any blade. Without a single word, she tempted him. Three times, he resisted her. The fourth, she finally spoke, whispering promises of forever in his ear, making him surrender to her embrace like the weak man he was.

And she sank her fangs into his heart, a grin upon her face.  



	8. We Sink

Another game night.

He hadn’t attended.

Despite taking an additional night shift to clear his head, despite being entirely undisturbed this time, he’d found it had done anything but and had retired to his cabin at the end of it, his heart none the lighter, with a sigh. Before he’d invited De Sardet up here, he’d only had boring dreams. Now, all he had were exquisite nightmares.

So, instead of laughing and playing cards and taking a tumble with and for a forbidden woman, he’d lit his lantern and had poured over his charts for hours. Had smoked a cigar out his porthole and finally, had crawled into bed alone. It had taken him nearly an hour of reading poems he’d long committed to memory to force his eyes shut, and still, his sleep had been broken. Harried. Bearing visions of drowning in horrific flashes that had nearly kept him from getting any sleep at all.

Probably why the noise of a marble rolling across the floor had made him bolt upwards with a start. Another damned marble that only served to bring golden hair and a tattoo the color of his own to mind…

He threw himself out of bed, swearing, relighting his lantern to-

Marble Two, rolling straight past him.

Of course, a little pitch and both the damned-

_ … _Three? 

Since when were there-

_ Four? _

He whipped his head to his door as a fifth rolled past. 

Sure enough, tanned fingers retreated through a crack at the bottom.

Sure enough, he threw his door open, and there she was.

“Captain! Hello! Good um… not morning. Can I… may I come in?”

He pulled her through the archway by the collar of her coat, clicking his door shut behind her. _ His _ damned coat that looked so right on her, and- “What in the hell are you doing? Anyone could have seen you, could have-”

“They didn’t! But there were a few people on deck tonight playing some kind of game with a puck, so I… may have messed with a sail, just a little for a distraction, and-”

“‘Just a little?’ Not the spanker, was it?”

She blinked once. Twice. A term she didn’t know.

Oh, for fu- “The stern most sail! It’s gaff-rigged, not square like the rest!”

“Oh! No! Not the driver one! Gods, I know what I’m doing, at least that much!”

“Do you?”

She sighed. “I only wanted to get the crew out of the way so I could get your attention, and-”

“De Sardet, I hardly want your attention right now.”

A lie. A lie he had to tell because the truth would break him in two, and like all broken things upon the water, he’d sink.

She wilted like a flower left to bloom in sea water, not fresh. “I know.” For a moment, she hesitated. Scrutinized his face like some lookout with a spyglass. “And… I also know you wanted to be rid of me the last time, because these waters are hardly choppy. I’m not buying that excuse again.”

“So, you barge your way in here, thinking I-”

“I owe you an apology.”

His bitter words died within his throat. But she… she wasn’t the one who’d been heinous. “You- you don’t… why?”

Silence.

Deafening silence.

And then, slowly, she found the words. “I’m… um… I’m good at drinking. And I’m good at cards. And… I’m good at lying. Good at reading people, or… most people, but… I… can’t get a hold on you, and…”

The rich person’s idea of an apology: ‘Let me tell you why I’m indispensable. Why you need me in your life…’

One he’d heard a hundred times. “So, you came up here to sell me on why those should be things I can’t miss out on? On why I should ignore that you could never care for anyone as much as you do your family? People who it sounds damn near abused you, but whom I would never be good enough for?”

Not while his pockets were light and his face was tattooed. They wouldn’t care if he would be good to her. Wouldn’t care if he wouldn’t lie, wouldn’t cheat, would care for her with all his soul… no. They would hate him for being ‘below’ her, and she’d indulge them like she indulged Constantin.

Not all problems in life could be solved with diplomacy. Sometimes, there was no compromise. Sometimes, one had to make a stand.

But she wouldn’t, because she hardly cared for him as much as he’d come to care for her.

Stupid, stupid…

Her hands flew to her head. “No! No, I didn’t mean- you think I’d- I- I only listen to them sometimes and- fuck! I had this whole speech planned out, and I’ve flubbed it, and- and-”

She whipped some rectangle between them, its nature obscured by his shadow.

He took a step back to put some light and space between them. 

A book…?

“Captain, I came up here to borrow your lantern, so… may I please?”

To- to-

_ Really? _

The balls on this woman were-

But despite his lack of permission, she ran over into the light anyway, frantically flipping through pages. Nearly bent over his bedside table, her hair glimmering in the light. “Just a second, I promise! It’s here; I know it’s here!”

This was torture. “De Sardet, please just g-”

“‘Tongue twisted. Stepping, stumbling, searching. No words, just touch that lights my chest aflame. But damned am I, I cannot speak for fear of breaking, breaking this.’” She stood again. “A poem. It’s called… called…”

He knew what it was called.

In a few strides, she crossed the room and pressed him to the wall by his collarbone. A gesture he’d done to her many nights ago when she’d had far too many clothes on. 

Now, he had far too few.

But her gaze was fretted, not lidded. The slope of her brows, the wideness of her eyes… tonight, she seemed more a frightened animal than a sultry tavern girl. “It doesn’t matter what it’s called. Because out there, I can make people think whatever I want, but in here… here, I’m only the little girl that watched the ships from dock and waved until my mother dragged me home, always scolding me when I’d grab onto things and bitch that I didn’t want to leave. And- and- I remember always wanting to talk to one of them. The sailors. But whenever I got the chance, I… never knew what to say.”

Her voice went small and timid and scared. “I still don’t know what to say. I have so many things I want to know, so many things I want to ask you, and yet, I- I keep coming up here and talking about my family instead, while you probably don’t know yours. Talking about the d’Orsay’s and the De Sardet’s, a group of people who, yes, would judge you for your existence alone. And I am _ so _ damned sorry, but I-I’m… I’m not bad with words around you because I don’t care what you think; I _ swear _ it, I… I…”

Because she didn’t know how to speak to someone who had no family to go home to? Because she did feel for those below her, but her ‘feelings’ were mainly pity? 

“Captain… I stutter and fumble when I’m around you, because I do care. Because you smile at me, and all the training I’ve done to hold my cool, to hold my tongue flies right out that damned porthole.”

His stomach flipped inside him.

Stars above…

She blinked rapidly, her eyes turned skyward, then closed them for a deep breath out. “And call me a masochist, but sharp words weren’t enough to dull that. So, if you don’t care… if you lashed out because you hate me and not because I hit some nerve… I need to know. I need to know because I am in far too deep and, I… um…”

But she dropped her hands from him and spoke no more.

What could he say to that?

What could he possibly say with any level of eloquence would convey what he wanted?

What did he even want to say? That her feelings didn’t matter because it could only ever be sex between them? That his feelings didn’t matter because nothing panned out for him? That he was so, so sorry for his callous remarks, but sorrier still that he’d let things go this far? 

With all his floundering in the water, he’d knocked her off the raft as well.

He should lie and break her heart, say he didn’t feel the same but… she’d opened her mouth and had sung him a song, and now, she had him under her spell once more. “You’re afraid of drowning. The water’s dark and you can’t see the bottom. You don’t want to sink alone.”

Slowly, she nodded. Looked to him. Waited for some affirmation he hardly had the courage to give.

He cleared his throat to cut the tension. Dropped her gaze like the coward he was. “You left out the middle.”

“I… what?” 

“The poem. You erm… left out the middle.”

Despite their presence inside, her look turned very ‘manatee in the way of the oar’. “That’s it. That’s all there is, it’s-”

He nudged past her and unburied his book from the covers. Flipped past the dog-eared page of his usual and onto the one she’d read. Sat and offered the book and the space beside him to her. 

She didn’t move, her hands clasped together. Like they’d been after he’d snapped at her. Had essentially told her she deserved to die alone and unloved.

Projection at its finest. “De Sardet… I shouldn’t have said what I did. About you. About your cousin. It was cruel. I… can be cruel. I was malicious when you didn’t deserve it, and for that, I’m sorry too. More than you should be. You’re…you’re…”

Special.

Perfect.

His breath hitched like hers did. “…different, whether or not I want to acknowledge that, but still, you’re…” No. No, that direction led to more arguments. He couldn’t argue any more with her. “The sea, I get. The Nauts, I get. But people like you, I’ve always had trouble with, and… I…”

‘People like her.’ 

_ Fuck. _

If she’d come up here to apologize as he had sulked like a teenager, Lauro had been right about her. She was no noble. In name, but not in deed. And yet, here he sat, calling her one and grouping her in with people she wasn’t.

Fuck him and fuck his lack of tact and- “Please, just take it.” She had to take the book, because he hadn’t the words the pages did. “_ Please _.”

Unsteady and unsure, she crept over to him. And she took his book but didn’t sit, though her gaze danced across the page. “‘Tongue twisted. Stepping, stumbling, searching. No words, just touch that lights my chest aflame. And-'”

“‘And if ever a scent has calmed me, then it would be that of her skin. And if ever I’ve loved a taste, then it shall be the taste of her. Her form is all I wish to see, her voice is all I wish to hear. But damned am I, I cannot speak for fear of breaking, breaking this.’”

Silence.

A gasp. Her lips parted without words and then… “A lost verse.”

“A censored one. Like most books from Summerset, the Thélème got their grubby hands on it at some point and printed a ‘purer’ version. I found this edition a few years ago when I was on shore leave on the Isle. Had to nearly beg the shopkeeper to sell it to me; he was horrified that he had it still. I told him I’d never share it with another soul. It… looks like I lied to him.”

He lied a lot when it came to her. 

“Captain, you… read poetry.”

“I read a lot of things. But yes.”

She took in a shaking, shuddering breath. “And in this one, it’s not called ‘Devotion’, it’s called…”

“’Smitten’.”

And with the clap of a shutting cover, she was upon him, her lips on his cold ones, hungry, devouring. Her hands on the bare skin of his chest, grasping, wanting. Her hips over his own, tempting, promising.

‘Smitten’. 

And damn him, he was.

His fingers flew to her coat, stumbling over buttons he’d undone a thousand times, and then-

Cool metal against his fingertips. 

He broke from her with a gasp.

She hadn’t anything else on underneath his jacket. She’d either rushed up here to speak to him or had wanted him to see this. To see her bare chest where his had once been. Maybe both.

And that only made him want her more.

‘Smitten.’ A perfect choice. Smitten, he was smitten, and-

And he’d known again as she’d ridden him, planting soft, stuttered kisses wherever she could reach, he’d known again as they’d flipped and he’d taken her, his breaths fluttering the sunshine hair over her ear, that he was the fool. He was the fool because she wasn’t here forever, wasn’t his forever, and yet, he’d fallen for her. 

But if he couldn’t have her forever, couldn’t have any promise of longevity, then he’d take what he could get. He’d take what he could get and pray that every memory he could steal with her would keep him warm on the lonely nights at sea that followed. 

Every moment he could claim with her was one he wouldn’t regret later. 

So, instead of their usual race to the finish and the next round, he’d taken his time. Had paused on his every edge as she’d whispered his title like a litany in his ear, begging for him to continue. Had stopped at her every warning, earning a teasing punch on his shoulder and a raunchy curse. When finally, she came undone, she was a sight to behold, one he’d sworn to see as many times as he could before she left him. And instead of digging her nails into his back or his ass or his chest, as he spilled inside her, seeing stars, she’d buried them in his hair and had pressed their foreheads together.

And for a moment, Naut and noble… they were one. 

Once they’d finally untangled themselves from each other, once he’d lowered a small bucket on a rope out his porthole, and they’d both toweled off with some sea water and a spare rag, the first thing she’d done was dive for his damned book. Fronds of Palm: The Extended Edition. A warm, whimsical poem collection that a supposedly hardened sailor such as him shouldn’t like. A wistful, wanting book whose sentiments nobility should never comprehend.

And she’d pouted when he’d snatched the book away from her then had retreated with it back to his desk and his star and depth charts. Not the same ones the navigator used. His own, made from experience, too much free time at night, the Dolphin Cry’s readings, and a sextant that he’d calibrated with a little extra care. 

Personal things. Like that poem.

“What? I’m not allowed to see what verse the pirate loves most?”

Though he tried his best to sound irritated, a huff through a smile always sounded insincere. “Can we stop with the ‘pirate’?”

“You know, I think it’s the eyeliner. It’s for some practical use I’m certain, but it is _ such _a look.”

If she’d asked him in front of the others, he would have sworn up and down that it was for practical use and that alone. Keeping the salt from his eyes. Reducing a bit of sun glare, something that ran rampant over each and every wave. Soothing the harsh rays that reflected into one’s face from all angles on deck. 

But damnit, it _ was _ such a look, a look he’d made his own. “It’s ‘kohl’, not eyeliner, and it has a few purposes.”

“Is one of them getting into people’s pants?”

“Oh, shut up.”

Her snicker lit a match inside his chest and let it burn. 

“Let it go, you vixen. A bit of kohl every day and a bit of rum every few are the only luxuries I get on this ship.”

“And the cabin.”

A sigh left him, lingering in the breeze that blew over a copious amount of maple, through one of the largest single rooms aboard. With the added benefit of a private place to shit in the quarter gallery. And a location away from nearly every other room so even Melvin the… whatever Melvin they were on couldn’t hear him jerk off. “All right, and the cabin.”

She extended her tattooed leg into the air, tracing a hand down it in a serpentine gesture like some burlesque dancer might. “And the company.”

“You’re pushing it, De Sardet. You don’t want to start with me.”

“Start what?” Said with all the innocence of a young girl begging for a sweet, from the mouth of a woman with piercings and tattoos splayed nude across the bed of a sailor. “I didn’t mean to do anything bad.”

“Riiiight. And how many poor bastards have bought this wholesome act of yours?”

With a snicker, she dropped her leg and flipped onto her stomach, adopting a tamer if equally alluring posture. “Too many, and not just the men. But I must say, it’s a bloody relief not to have to keep it up with you. I’ve known you were the ‘no-bullshit’ type since you called me on the ‘boat’ phrasing and told me your ship was setting sail no matter who was or wasn’t aboard.”

Then she was far quicker than he. It hadn’t been until she’d first stripped in front of him that he’d figured out her innocence was a guise. 

“The tide does wait for no one, Lady De Sardet.”

Not even a wondrous woman like her.

But she summoned him back to bed with a pat of the space next to her, so he left his melancholy at his desk with his charts and lounged beside her once more. 

She pulled his head onto her chest. Stroked his hair with the same rise and fall with which waves might lap at a beach.

_ ‘And as the sea, she carves and shapes the land, _

_ So too does she shape every sailor’s soul…’ _

“Captain, can we be serious for a moment?”

Mmm. Always the question that proceeded uncomfortable ones. “If we must.”

“I… um…” Those blissful touches paused. She swallowed hard enough to make it audible. Resumed her playing with his hair. “Not to stir the waters again, but as someone who is… up there in the ranks of the Congregation, I have more pull than I should. If you ever want to know about your family, I-”

“I do.”

“Oh! Well then, in New Sérène, I could-”

“I meant I already know. But thank you.”

“You…” She pushed his head into her lap, sitting up enough to look him in the eyes. “You already know?”

He gave a slow nod. Bit his lip. 

She wouldn’t push. After their earlier argument, she wouldn’t push.

And yet… “The d’Arcy’s. I’m from the d’Arcy’s from Sérène. Their younger son.”

“But that means…” Her jaw fell open. “Shit, you’re nobility! You’re-”

“I’m a _ Naut _.”

“Well, now you are, but…” Her hand flew to her still-gaping mouth. Stayed there as she gnawed upon the webbing between her index finger and her thumb. “We could have grown up together.”

“And instead of knowing the hardworking, curious child I’m told that I was, you would have had ‘play dates’ with an entitled little shit like my brother.”

“Yes, of course, but-”

He gently smacked her on the cheek. “You’re supposed to say, ‘No, Vasco, you are who you are,’ then add on some placating, useless sentiment about me being perfect as I am now.”

‘Perfect as he was’. What a fucking lie that would be.

“But Captain, you _ are _ perfect as you are.”

Of course, she’d substituted in ‘Captain’, that wen-

_ Oh. _

Her eyes stole a piece of what little moonlight shined outside, just for him. “So… what would your name have been?”

That damned name.

Should he tell her?

Would she tease him about it?

His gaze bounced to his cutlass hanging in the corner. To something less piercing than her eyes. “‘Léandre’. ‘Léandre d’Arcy’.”

She’d think that was better. Something more suited to-

A snort of laughter sounded from behind him. “‘Léandre d’Arcy.’ Gods, what a shit name.”

Hell, this woman…

Try as he might, he couldn’t keep a grin from creeping up his cheeks. From smiling that idiot smile that the younger sailors always did when a pretty lady waved at them in port. Because De Sardet was everything she shouldn’t be, and that… was perfect too.

“At least the d’Arcy’s didn’t think my name was ‘Captain.’”

A high-pitched huff of outrage. “I know your name’s not ‘Captain!’ I-”

“Tell me, My Fair Lady, if we meet in port some… fifteen years from now, will you see me, your face lighting like the sunrise, and promptly attempt to get my attention with an, ‘Oy, Captain’?”

She fell into snickers.

“What if, by some stroke of chance, I’ve made the admiralty by then, Admiral Cabral’s retired, and they’ve moved my station to New Sérène? And as you see me in the harbor office, then shout, your eyes widening in surprise, some poor sap on leave looking for a lovely lady to keep him warm will swagger up to you, and you’ll disappoint him and break his bleeding heart like you nobles always-”

Say what he would about her lazy upbringing, De Sardet was quick. Despite the laughter he soon joined her in, she wrested the pillow out from behind her, beat him about the head and face with it, then tucked it back behind her and his hair back behind his ear, smiling serenely. 

As if nothing had ever happened. “You- you- how do you just…? What a damned poker face.”

“A well-practiced one. Now, can we stop with the ‘noble’ and the ‘Lady’?”

Like it or not, he couldn’t stop with the ‘Lady’. She’d been listed on his passenger manifest as ‘Lady De Sardet’, and not once in the last few months had he thought to ask her given name. At first, because it wouldn’t have mattered to him. When it had become something that had mattered, the question had become something he could hardly ask.

Kurt always referred to her as ‘Green Blood’. Constantin, as ‘my dear cousin’.

Was she an ‘Eloise’? An ‘Angeline’? Unless he confessed and asked her now, he may never know. 

But would a name change anything about the gnarled knot of feeling nestled within his chest? “You’ll be a ‘noble’ and a ‘Lady’ as long as I’m a ‘pirate’ and a ‘Captain’; how about that?”

The wench made to grab the pillow behind her again, but he caught the twitch of her elbows and pinned both her wrists to the bed. 

An intake of breath. A lidded glare. She bucked against him.

He didn’t break his hold.

She didn’t break his gaze, staring down with amber eyes that could have melted straight through his soul. “It’s not an insult. Well, ‘pirate’ is, but… ‘Captain’ is a term of respect, and as long as I’m a passenger on your ship, I’m going to use it. Because you deserve it. You’ve earned it.”

‘Respect’. Not something anyone from the upper class had ever told him he deserved. 

He never would have thought her reasoning would have been so…

But with a clear of her throat, she shuffled behind him and looked away. “Back to the d’Arcy’s… they’re greedy bastards, always bargaining with more than they have. You’re better off without them. My family hated them. Could never say anything publicly, of course, but their son shames them enough for all of us. They spoiled that boy rotten, gave him more than enough for two sons, and it shows.”

‘More than enough for two sons.’ 

There was that damned question again.

Why?

Why not keep him? If they had the means, why not keep him? Wasn’t he enough?

But… the Nauts’ contracts didn’t care how much money one had to give; they were an even exchange. Manpower for mileage. Contracts never required families to immediately birth a child to fill them. Most bargained with the children already born, but a promise was also accepted as payment were one a repeat customer and significantly indebted. And if the d’Arcy’s had a habit of barely running ahead of their obligations…

By the light of Altair, he could have been the payment for that.

He brought a hand to his mouth, covering the intricate blue lines the Nauts had marked him with upon his initiation. An outward sign that _ someone _ had cared about his existence. “I could have been a contract child. My parents could have never wanted me at all.”

“Good.”

She- _ what? _

“If they had, back in Sérène, instead of you sending me after Jonas, maybe it would have been some other captain sending me to look for you. Maybe, unlike Jonas, you wouldn’t have been rearing to come home to the ship. All I know is that I was the one charged with booking passage to Teer Fradee, and when they asked me what my price range was, I said ‘I’d rather not die, so give me the best.’ And the Nauts pointed me to you.”

He hadn’t the heart to correct her to ‘Cabin Boy’, though Jonas had likely paid his dues by now with all the jibes Shawna shot at him when she took the helm. Inwardly motherly, outwardly mocking as hell.

And… ‘the best’? “They did not say that, you lying shrew.”

She returned his earlier slap on the cheek, giggling when he snatched her hand and held it there. “They absolutely did! ‘The best damned captain in the Northern Corridor.’ And the moment your name came up, another sailor said you’d make admiral at twenty-five.”

A pretty notion, even if the thought of retiring to land within the year gave him the jitters. “I’m nearly twenty-five now, and it requires some great deed to make admiral; we don’t have many of them. Only one in every port. I don’t know if I’m that good.”

With a fingertip more calloused than a pampered socialite’s should be, she traced the wave etched along his jaw, pointed towards his nose. A marking given to those who’d navigated on the high seas and had brought their ship out the other side. She lingered upon the crest of a wave behind that one, on a birthmark the tattoo artist had frowned at. 

But De Sardet smiled. “Not too late to sail into some hurricane. You can bust out the big heroics, and I won’t tell a soul it was on purpose.”

Enough to make him give an ugly snort of a laugh. “The point is usually to avoid storms, not to seek them out. If it can’t be skirted without losing too much time, then fine, but here…? Ocean’s too cold for anything as grand as a hurricane.”

She opened her mouth to protest.

Exactly why he continued. “In these waters, they’re called ‘cyclones’, by the way. Same storm, but a different name in every ocean. And before you ask if, ‘me and my boat have cruised in a typhoon before’, the answer is yes.”

“You cocksure piece of- why am I here again?”

“Because, like all noble women, you have a type and it’s, ‘pierced, tattooed, and likely to get himself killed by thirty’.”

She glared daggers at him for but a moment before relenting with a sigh. “Speaking of… I could dive overboard, and you could stage a valiant rescue. Would that be enough to make admiral?”

“If people hear you plotting to-”

The hand he didn’t have on lockdown hit his shoulder with an oddly arousing slap. “We’re not proving that man wrong, damnit! You’ve got to be record-breaking something, because this is the smoothest voyage I’ve been on, and all the crew sing your praises, and it’s not fair for you to have to…”

She’d opened with sex, had kept up with him in banter, then had jumped to wearing his clothing and poetry. Now, they were a ‘we’, and she schemed to advance his career. By the depths, she fell like he did. 

…Why did she have to leave?

“…should be nearly enough to-” De Sardet’s smile slipped away, her brows sinking. “Damnit, I’m sorry. Something I said? If we hit a bad topic, please tell me, because apparently I’m denser than-”

“No, no, no, no…” He pressed the back of her hand to his lips. Not like her fingers. So soft. “Don’t worry of it. Most Nauts die a captain; few are promoted above that. Like I said, admiral is a rare position. This could be the highest station I’ll ever have.”

Words that, for some damned reason, called her smile back once more. “Then in fifteen years my, ‘Oy! Captain! How’s the boat?’ will be guaranteed to catch your attention.”

And they laughed. Chuckled up a storm that the ocean heard and joined in on as well, throwing a bit more of chop into her waters. After a while, he and De Sardet calmed even if the waves didn’t, and there they sat upon his bed, still awake at some absurd hour of the morning.

Still, he lounged in her lap without a care in the world.

Still, her hand laid upon his cheek. “Captain? May I propose something?”

Propose what? What soul-sucking question would she have for him now? 

Nothing he couldn’t duck, for certain. “My dear Lady, the Nauts are hardly one for that sort of ceremony. And don’t you think it’s a little soon?”

An audible jaw drop, and she flushed bright red. “You are the _ cheekiest _bastard-”

“Besides, aren’t you betrothed to five different noblemen back home? All old and boring?”

A sigh from her carnation lips.

Shit, was she?

“I’ve broken off four. After that, they learned to stop arranging such things without permission I’d never give.” She fell quiet for a moment. Wound a strand of his hair around her finger. “They always wondered why. My um… my family doesn’t know. About the drinking, a little; I think that much was obvious when three glasses of champagne at a soirée would do nothing to me, but… not the whoring. The sterility. Most of them were livid about the proposals and my refusal to ‘look like a lady’; I can’t imagine what they would have said…”

Talking about her family brought the gloom back in, as speaking of family always did. 

But… ‘whoring’? “Were they paying you?”

“My family? For the marriages? Paying _ them _ maybe, but-”

“No, the people you slept with. Were they paying you?”

If he’d thought her embarrassed her before, he’d been wrong. This time, she looked absolutely appalled. “_ What? _ No! It was experimental, certainly, but all voluntary, and-”

“Then don’t shame yourself. It wasn’t ‘whoring’, just sex. That’s all. Nothing despicable about it.”

Her embarrassment faded into this soft sort of glow that lit her face more than the lantern beside her. “I knew there was a reason I told you.”

“Me, and every other-”

“Only you.”

She hadn’t…? “Not even Constantin?”

“He knew I’d sneak out, but…” De Sardet shook her head. “Some things, he wouldn’t… doesn’t… we were inseparable as children, but as we grew up… he was scolded for staying out late and drinking. I was scolded for walking outside without makeup. He was taught how to argue, and I was taught how to assuage. And if he was blunt, he was bold, but if I was blunt, I was brash. Sex was just another thing that he was allowed, and I wasn’t.” 

She gnawed on a nail, her voice rising ever higher. “He could _ never _ understand. My own body, and I couldn’t have-” It took a few slow breaths before she could speak again. “You said my family would never think you were enough. You already understand. I… was never enough for them either.”

Water welled within her eyes, poised, ready to rain.

No, no, no, no- “Stars, I shouldn’t have brought it up. I didn’t mean to-”

But a swallow and a few blinks, and she hid her tears away. “Don’t be. I um… you told me about yours; it’s only fair. They… my family weren’t horrible people, they just…” A glance out the porthole gave her the answers she sought. “Never wanted me to be who I wanted to be.”

“Can’t say I know what that’s like. I’m sure it wasn’t pleasant.” Why she hadn’t picked up her things and left was still a mystery, but not one he needed to solve tonight. Not worth causing her more pain that she didn’t deserve. “And I’m also sure they had the same unforgivable lack of taste as the average noble, because you’re perfect as you are.”

A gasp. “I… you can’t be…”

No more words. Not for a while. Just hands in his hair that massaged his scalp like… like… no one had before. Gestures that sent lazy tingles through his head and down his spine.

But after scritching circles for nearly long enough to send him to sleep, De Sardet found her voice. “That’s why I love it out here. Here, it doesn’t matter what anyone in Sérène wants; I’m literally an ocean away from them. And the sea doesn’t judge. The sea is fair.”

That… it was, though… land folk hardly held that opinion for long. “Mmm… for now, you say that. We draw closer to Teer Fradee, you may change your tune. Weather can get wild. My next trip is a loop around the island and back to the continent, but if… if I wash up on your doorstep, you’ll know I hit that storm you were looking for.” 

Silence.

He dragged his eyes open to a smile on her lips that was almost sad. And, damn him, he hadn’t the energy nor the heart to ask why.

Quiet fell between them, save the wash of the ocean and the creak of the boards above. And there, they laid together, his eyes only fluttering back open at the peek of what passed for dawn’s light through the porthole. 

The first thing he saw was her. Nodded off, her head heeling towards her shoulder. Brows not twisted or peaked or tented, but slack for once. Her light locks falling out of their tie. Her fingers still intertwined in his hair.

There, he lay for a bit, not willing to wake her as she hadn’t been willing to wake him to move into a position less ridiculous than the one she held. 

He’d be late onto deck. But he’d already broken all his rules, what was one more?

Soon, the wind whipped up, whistling through the riggings, the resulting hellish noise jolting her from slumber, shooting her brows sky-high with panic.

He put a hand to her cheek. “Bit of inclement weather. Nothing to worry about.”

His touch and a deep breath of salt air seemed to calm her, and when she opened her eyes once more, they’d lost their alarm.

That was, until they took a heel to starboard with the wind, and there went all seven marbles, spiraling across the floor in a cacophony of rolling glass that came to rest underneath his bed with a series of knocks against the wall. 

He scowled.

She bit back her grin.

“Of course, you had to catch my attention with more fucking marbles.”

“It worked, didn’t it? But if you’re truly so unhappy about them…” De Sardet practically preened, peering down at him from over her nose. “I could stoop under the bed and dive for them, if you’d like. Leave my legs up the side and put on your jacket first. Maybe just your hat…?”

Never had there been a more tempting offer that he couldn’t take. “You see that murky haze outside? Out here, that’s dawn.”

Her smile fell. “Shit. So, you’re already late.”

“Yes.”

“The crew’s already up.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“I’m going to have to ‘walk of shame’ out of here, aren’t I?”

His crew would tease her all the way Teer Fradee. “I could try to sneak you out around shift-change. Could knock on the door when most of the quarterdeck’s unoccupied.”

“Can I rifle through those charts in the meantime? Or read your unedited book?”

Of all the things in here, she’d asked after both the professional secrets he couldn’t reveal and the personal ones he didn’t wish to. But she had asked, and her question alone meant she’d respected his privacy as he’d slept.

Maybe… “The book, yes, the charts, not unless you want me to hang you from the yard after.”

A Lady who loved some gallows humor, based upon her snickers. 

“But can I ask you not to read the dog-eared one? I’d… erm… I’d like to read it to you myself, eventually.”

Her laughter fading, she brought a hand over her lips. A coquettish gesture that didn’t fit her, but somehow still managed to be endearing. “Of course.”

So, with a tender kiss and a lingering touch, he left her. Locked away his charts once more, brushed his teeth and shaved, relined his eyes, then dressed in his usual attire plus a scarf about his neck to keep out the inevitable rain. “I’ll knock twice when it’s safe for you to head out; it’ll be a few hours ‘til then. You sure you’ll be all right?”

“Just tell Kurt I fell overboard, if he asks.”

“Right. I’ll be sure to remind myself of the lengths you’ll go to to avoid embarrassment as he wraps his tiny hands around my neck.”

A muffled snort of laughter. “They are tiny, aren’t they? If I knew how to knit, I’d make little mittens for them. His hands don’t fit a mercenary. Too cute, almost.”

That, they were. 

“But Captain?”

‘Captain.’ A title she used from respect, not mockery. One of a thousand things he l…liked about her. “Yes?”

Silence.

He turned.

And once more, she looked the small girl with no words at dock, not the cocky, conniving woman he’d grown to know. “Will I see you next game night?”

Would she?

Some… twelve knots on average, twenty-four hours in a day, seven days from now… two-thousand nautical miles? “Damn. Maybe not.”

Her face fell.

“Assuming a good tailwind, we’ll be in rougher waters by then. Actually rougher, not bullshit rougher. To make up a bit of time, I’d planned on taking us through the Falaise Strait, and I’ll need to be on deck for all of that. Not more than a day’s passage, but waters are choppy to put it kindly, and too much drift in one direction or the other, and we run aground.”

But she didn’t pout. Didn’t mourn a lost night together. Instead, that wicked, plotting smirk overtook her. “Then, what I wanted to propose earlier… meet again tomorrow? Or rather, tonight?”

The misty air from the open porthole along with her leg-folded posture made her ever more the siren on the rocks, tempting him forward, teasing him into drowning. 

And damn him, he hadn’t the will to stay away. “All right. I’ll see you tonight.”

All the sun that beat upon the deck in tropical waters wouldn’t be as bright as the grin she gave him. “Right! I’ll um… I’ll see you then. Smooth sailing, Captain!”

“I’ll certainly try. And De Sardet?” 

“Hmm?”

“I’m glad we talked.”

The drop of her jaw meant nothing good could follow. “Then, you’re glad for marbles by proxy! I could get more! Bring some extra dozen up here, let them loose- imagine the chaos!”

He slammed shut the door behind him, muffling her cackle. But though he swallowed, shook his head, and ran a gloved hand over his mouth, he couldn’t seem to peel that idiot smile from his lips.


	9. Captain, Can You Do Me a Favor?

“Lauro! We’re in enough chop to shake loose a damned coconut; get your ass down here and get some salve before you add vomit to the rain!”

“But Captain!” Said with more whine than any seedy gossip party in San Matheus. “If I come down there, I’ll start the heaves, and I won’t be able to get back up!”

He rescinded his designation from the other night; Lauro wasn’t human. How the hell else would the man’s motion sickness tendencies function opposite of every other person alive?

“I’ll be fine, Captain, promise! ‘Long as I keep my eyes on the horizon, and I stay up here, I’m good! I’ve got my bottle, a bucket for water, a bucket for everything else-”

Tide take him and erase that knowledge.

“-I’ll come down tomorrow!”

Flavia shot him a perplexed look, the bottle of oils still clenched in one hand, the other secured around a length of rope. “You want that I should head up there, Captain Vasco?”

He ran a hand over his eyes, probably smearing black down to his cheekbones. Not that it mattered; the clouds had swallowed the sun days ago and had yet to spit it back up. “No. The aim is not to trigger those on deck who are sympathetic vomiters, and if you go up there, you’ll get sick too. If he says he’s fine, he’s fine. He might be a stubborn, spying, secretive bastard, but he’s not a liar.”

“Thanks, Captain! ‘Preciate it! Knew you liked me!”

A stubborn, spying, secretive bastard with the hearing of a bat. No need for the damned Dolphin Cry; they could stick Lauro under the hull with a tube of air and a tube of liquor, and they’d be none the worse off. His lookout and his least-noble noble guest were the only two people aboard who continually managed to surprise him. 

Well. The two of them and Antonio. His navigator had practically begged him not to enter the strait this morning because of ‘sirens’, but that was a shock he should have anticipated. If the man lived his life by the secondhand words of some two-faced light and shadow god, sirens weren’t a heavy leap. But… Antonio could do as he wished. His navigator never harassed anyone about conversion, and the man hadn’t called the Ordo Luminus on him and the rest of his ‘pagan’ crew yet, so…

Much as it irked him, live and let live.

A more disturbing notion: if Lauro had heard him through the wind and the rain and the whistle of the rigging, what else had he heard? Every time he’d thought he was being quiet…

“You all right there, Captain?” Flavia pushed off the pole, half-staggering towards him through the pitch of the deck. “You need more salve?”

“I’ll be fine. Realized something disturbing, that’s all.”

“That Lauro probably listens to everyone jerk it?” 

Flavia wasn’t off by much. 

She reached his position, then clutched onto his arm to keep from stumbling. “Should I offer the salve again to our guests? I’m not leaving it with them by any means, but if it stops their ralphing…”

“Their choice to stay below deck, not mine. If you’ve offered our remedy, and they’ve declined, then piss on them. They can sleep in their own sick.”

A shout from above: “Heart of gold, Captain Vasco! Heart of gold!”

“Lauro, I will get some rope and make you the new figurehead! I’m not catering to nobles!”

But not all of them needed catering to. 

De Sardet sat on the steps to the quarterdeck, one hand clasped around a wooden column, a smile on her face as she gazed out to sea. No protests. No puking like Kurt and Constantin. Smelling of lavender and peppermint and dozen other extracts like the rest of his crew. 

Perhaps partly because, though this was hardly the best weather he’d seen, the Sea Horse handled it well. She heeled even with the reefed sails but didn’t list. His crew had secured the cargo, and true to her name, the Sea Horse carried it without complaint. He’d been far too begrudging towards her for her name being a pun; she was quite the workhorse.

Or… what he’d imagine a workhorse would be like. He couldn’t say he’d ever ridden one.

If the conditions weren’t quite as rough as he’d been expecting... his mentor had always said that storms were an opportunity to learn. That storms proved what kind of captain a person was. He’d learned himself that most fear was of the unknown, and if his captain had never hauled him onto deck time and time again when all he’d wanted was to hide away in the hold, he wouldn’t be half the sailor he was today. 

To De Sardet’s left, Shawna still held the wheel steady on her own, and were they in the widest part of the channel, this might be an opportunity to continue tradition.

“Flavia!” He cocked his head aft. “With me for a bit.”

And though she gulped as if some sea monster had peeked its gaping maw over the side and had spoken in tongues to her alone, she followed, keeping pace with his strides despite her wobbles. On they went, though all the weather deck, past De Sardet (whose elbow brushed his leg, damn her) and up to the quarterdeck, across from the wheel.

“Relieved, Shawna. Stand by to spot.”

With a nod, she bequeathed the wheel to him, taking a place on the railing instead.

“Flavia?”

Her gasp sounded over the weather around them. “You shitting me, Captain? I’ve steered in storms before, but never in as tight of quarters as-”

“Exactly. If you ever want to make officer, you’ll need to learn. Shawna can spot you. She knows the course, as do I. We’ll be right here; no need to be scared.”

A moment spent warring with herself, and Flavia swallowed her fear, hiding it beneath a cocky smile. “Scared for you all, maybe. We’re about to find out who’s got their land legs still.”

A murmur of laughter passed through those in earshot. Discomforted laughter.

He kept ahold as Flavia made a hesitant approach. 

They had no need to fear. She could do this. And if not, Shawna had course-corrected greener seamen than Flavia a hundred times. Himself, hundreds more.

Flavia grabbed the wheel.

And slowly, he let go.

Bit of a jerk to the left that made the entire deck crew lurch and look up in alarm, but… damnit, she did have it. And she pointed them back towards the middle of the channel with a laugh and a whoop that brought a smile to his face.

He gave her some air to breathe even if Antonio didn’t, rushing over to point out a million things that Flavia ‘could need to know’. But Shawna too relaxed with a grin, so he retreated to the corner De Sardet occupied, standing behind her, slouched onto the railing.

She cocked her head back to look up at him, holding onto her usual feathered hat so she didn’t lose it to the wind. “That was cute, Captain. Lot of trust there, letting a cadet steer your yacht.”

…Of course. She never strictly had a compliment for him. Not in public, at least.

“You know, De Sardet, you can’t open up a thesaurus, look under ‘ship’, the correct term by the way, and insert whatever word you like. Language doesn’t work like that, not out here. If someone says, ‘we’re lying to’ and you say, ‘to whom?’ they’re going to laugh you off the deck.”

“Tell that to the rafters above us on your sloop.”

Oh, that-

All right, time to actually get her laughed off deck. 

He raised his voice into what Shawna and Salem always called ‘Captain Tone’. “You hear that ladies and gents? We’re on a beautiful sloop! Lucky us!”

A chorus of muffled snickers.

De Sardet buried her head in her hand, laughing herself, what little of her face showed well on its way to bright pink.

Of course, why he pressed on. “At least we’re not on a generic ‘boat’ anymore. Still, I’ve no idea where to put all of you, so you’re bunking up! De Sardet, I hope you’re not shy, because half the crew sleeps naked, and you’re sharing with Shawna and Flavia and Jonas and Lauro and Salem and Fina and-”

“Mercy, I get the damned point! We all share one big mattress below deck.”

“That would be ‘one small mattress’, my dear Lady. Most sloops are tiny.”

“All due respect, Captain, piss off.”

_ Perfect. _“Not on the quarterdeck, De Sardet; I’ll visit the head if I need to piss. People walk around freely up here, even if you’re not allowed to.”

He’d put her beyond hope of a reply, silent chuckles wracking her form. 

And she wasn’t the only one. Flavia, bless her salty soul, still managed to hold the ship steady despite looking like she’d swallowed a chili pepper whole. If she could stay the course through all his bullshit… he’d taught her well.

One more rib for daring to call the Sea Horse a ‘sloop’?

He leaned in close to De Sardet, sliding his hand down the railing behind her, brushing his fingers over hers. “And if someone tells you to ‘lay the Captain’s-’”

The door behind him banged open. 

“I’m dying! Oh, I’m dying, I…” A pale, dark-eyed Constantin stumbled over to the railing, heaving a bit of spittle over the side. “Cousin, say your goodbyes, because the-”

More vomit that looked to be mostly water narrowly avoided the man’s stringy hair.

Thank fuck it wasn’t chunky, and he was upwind.

“-Great Reaper is coming for my soul.”

He bit his tongue so as not to laugh or reprimand.

Shockingly, De Sardet wasn’t so kind. “Constantin, you idiot! I told you to take what they give you!”

“It smelled like poison, and I was already hu- heaving! Huh- he wanted me to put it behind my ears! I couldn’t-” A dry heave from a man who had nothing left to vomit up. “I can’t…”

From behind Constantin, Jonas gave a bewildered shrug, holding a bucket, his nostrils firmly plugged with bits of cloth. 

“Cabin Boy, how long has this been going on?”

“Some sixteen hours, Captain. After I found him up on deck, the Coin Guard finally took some salve, drank some water, then passed out again, but this one’s been up the whole time.”

_ Sixteen hours _ of carting sick buckets? _ Damn, _ that boy was dedicated to making sailor _ . _“Welcome back to the named ranks of the Sea Horse, Jonas; all is forgiven.”

Jonas grinned, though it didn’t last long. 

Constantin had lurched backwards and for some damned reason was trying to climb the stairs. But despite Jonas’s quick sick-bucket empty and dive to keep him from falling, it seemed the would-be governor wanted no aid. “Let me be! Let me lie on the poop deck and empty my soul up there! I’ll be surrounded by feces, but at least I will be able to sleep without the c-cabin boy warning me about ch-huh-oking.”

“Oh, you daft-” He grabbed for Constantin’s arm, yanking him backwards, sending the man all but stumbling into his chest. “Jonas, you’ve still got salve?”

True to form, Jonas delivered the bottle. 

And as he held De Sardet’s cousin by a cold, clammy scruff with one hand, he uncorked the salve, then smeared some behind the man’s ears with the other. “On deck, where we don’t have cabin boys to cart our shit for us, we do our business in the _ head_, not on the poop deck. If you puke up there, not only will the wind blow the stink of it all the way down the ship, but you’ll also be puking directly over my cabin, which I would not sanction for all the gold you own.” If the pine tar held through all the rain, a bit of vomit wasn’t likely to get through, but he wasn’t about to take any chances. Not for this man. “Besides, two places you don’t want to be in a storm, ‘less you’ve only one oar in the water, are inside and up high. Understand?”

A distant shout rang out from behind him: “Fuck you, Captain!”

“My door’s always open, Lauro!”

His lookout fell silent once more.

But when he turned his head back around, though Constantin’s eyes watered and his nose wrinkled, he’d stopped heaving. “You… you all weren’t… this really works, doesn’t it? De Courcillon was right! Oh, I’ll have to tell him when we meet back in port- Naut magic!”

He nodded. In the most condescending way possible, of course.

But De Sardet’s cousin hardly noticed. “You… you cured me! I… it… I’m not dying!” Slowly, he stood on his own, not without a wobble. Managed to grab the banister in time to stop his fall. “I thought…”

He released his grip on the man and washed his hands in the rain. “No... someone like you’ll likely die old and grey, surrounded by weeping women and draped in enough black silks to clothe the city’s homeless.”

And, damn him, the man let out a sigh of relief.

Nobles. Couldn’t live with them, and it was rather frowned upon to shove them overboard. 

Just a little push. That’s all it would take. He could say he’d tripped on the water-slicked deck, stumbled into the man, and… oh! What a shame.

But… De Sardet would be upset, and being the worse man in life had never gotten him far. Besides, based on the state of Constantin, he may not have to personally do anything. It seemed a light breeze would bowl the man over.

“Remind me to listen next time someone offers me a foul-smelling remedy. And dear cousin, please thank the Captain properly on my behalf, I… I think I’ll lay…” With the next gust of wind, Constantin slumped over, De Sardet’s quick turn and Jonas’s lightning lunge the only thing keeping him from hitting the deck like a bird shot from the sky.

He put a hand to De Sardet’s shoulder to temper her alarm. “Dehydration, most likely. He’ll be fine in a day or two. And Jonas?”

The cabin boy looked up, somehow still ready for orders.

“I hate to ask you to do more, but you could bring him back to bed and get him some water when he wakes? Fresh water.” Sea water would be an excellent prank, but one too cruel for the man’s current predicament. “Maybe a biscuit or two once he keeps the water down. He’ll be back on his feet in no time.”

Unfortunately. Despite the recent weather, sailing without constant pestering about the ‘magic in use’ or endless wishful tales starting with, ‘when I am governor’ was quite refreshing. But now, were he not mistaken…

Flavia brought them around a bend in the canyon, the compass needle swinging north-northwest. 

So, as De Sardet and Jonas carted their cargo below, he took the wheel back and kept it through the Narrows. A perilous, twisting, beautiful journey through towering cliffs that nearly covered the sky itself. Though the wind drove at their backs the entire way, threatening to wreck them upon the rocks, he directed them through without incident and reentered the open ocean to a resounding cheer.

A bit much, but… De Sardet cheered with them, sporting a grin that set his foolish heart more aflutter than the sails.

“All right, lads and lasses! Storm’s let up, we’re through the strait, so full sail ahead! Let’s make up that time!”

And they did, his crew all jumping to life, climbing the rigging, yanking on ropes and pulleys to unfurl the sails once more. The wind behind them in full, the way clear and hopefully smooth from here to Teer Fradee, he handed the wheel back to Shawna and made his way down towards where De Sardet spoke with a finally recovered Kurt.

“… Green Blood, come on.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m not stupid. Made to check on you last night, and I may have been half-delirious, but I wasn’t out of it enough not to notice your cabin was empty. So, I went up on deck, and you weren’t there either, and-”

“And you passed out, pissed yourself, and Jonas had to come get you?”

“Green Blood! I’m serious! You weren’t…” Kurt lowered his voice, but the ever-faithful wind blew it in his direction. “…you weren’t with some sailor, were you? I know your mum held you abreast, and now’s your chance to go wild, but-”

“‘Wild’? I was playing checkers with the captain, not that that’s any of your business!”

And that… wasn’t entirely a lie. 

De Sardet had been to his cabin often the past week, and though they’d slept together every night, they hadn’t laid together for all of them. Monday night, they’d read to each other, nearly falling asleep with the lantern on. Wednesday, he’d plucked an old chess set from his drawer and had absolutely put her to shame. And last night, after christening his desk, an endeavor which had seen many compliments on flexibility shot around the room, they’d gathered the marbles from his floor, and she had indeed taught him that strange form of checkers. Still, he was awful at it, but according to her it was ‘the attempt that counted.’

A land sentiment if ever he’d heard one.

But not to Kurt. “Hell fire, that’s worse!”

“Worse? The captain is-”

“A six-foot-tall, eye-lined heartthrob who’s probably bedded more women than I have fingers and toes?”

“So… nineteen and a half? That one on your right foot is gnarled to fu-”

“_Green Blood!_” Kurt whipped his head in his direction, forcing him to try his damnedest to look like he merely surveilled his crew and not their conversation. “Look at him!”

Shit, and now she stared too. Poker face, poker face, focus on the billow of the course sail…

“That’s not a man who can promise forever, so if you fall for him like you tend to do-”

His heart jumped into his throat.

“Kurt! I do _ not! _ I…”

The dangers of eavesdropping. Sometimes one learned things one didn’t wish to know. 

And Kurt had been right. 

He couldn’t promise forever. He couldn’t promise anything. Such were the ways of a life at sea.

“…captain and I are not- ugh! You miserable oaf; you’re insufferable sometimes, you know that?”

“I’m only saying-”

“Have you said five words to the man outside of calling him a pirate? He’s a good person! A little sharp-tongued, but he’s-”

“Basically a pirate without the gold! We’ve been over this! The Nauts have the whole ‘commander-captain-sailor’ thing, and the only way anyone keeps them in line are contracts for...”

Painfully obvious where De Sardet had gotten that line from. Nothing like a good, old-fashioned Coin Guard brainwashing.

“Captain?”

“Green Blood, don’t you call him over here! Don’t you-”

Sounds of a scuffle.

Louder this time: “Captain!”

And the wench was dragging him into this. May the seas have mercy upon his soul. 

He turned and made his approach, hopefully selling sudden interest. “Lady De Sardet. Kurt the Coin Guard. How’s your third party? And what can I do for you?”

“Constantin’ll be fine, Captain, thanks to your tough love. And Kurt was wondering-”

Five fingers clamped over De Sardet’s mouth. Tiny, cute ones that mittens _ would _ be hilarious on. Perhaps he could get Flavia on that, not that Kurt would ever wear them. Not that Flavia knew that he knew that she knitted.

“I wasn’t wondering anything, Captain Vasco. Her imagination gets carried away, that’s a-ow!” Kurt withdrew his hand to reveal De Sardet’s spreading smirk. “You little shit, you bit me!”

“You put your fingers over my mouth! What did you expect I’d-”

Nothing like a golden opportunity to make them share in his discomfort. 

He gave a rather marked clear of his throat. “Should I get you two a room? De Sardet says we’re on a sloop, so space is rather limited, but I should be able to give you a little privacy. The orlop deck, maybe? Lower? Fucking in the hold would be unpleasant for the both of you and Melvin, although… given Kurt’s apparent fetish for putting people into boxes…”

Kurt’s jaw dropped, soon mouthing ‘Melvin?’

De Sardet gave him a look that said, as her cousin had suggested, she would very much ‘thank him properly’ later, but not without some attitude. A feat he’d more than welcome.

But it was the mercenary who recovered and spoke first. “What _ is _ this boat called, anyhow? I know it’s the ‘Seahorse’ but, beyond that… not sure the term. A schooner? A… gallon? That’s what those pirate ships are called, right? Not a bark; you’ve got all sideways sails except the butt one.”

Ocean pull him under and carry his body somewhere peaceful where the only sounds would be the roar of the waves, the cry of seabirds, and the emphatic absence of people taking concise nautical terminology and fucking it straight up the ass.

But though De Sardet bit her lip and blinked skyward for a moment, she did indeed save him the pain of answering. “Kurt, didn’t you hear the Captain’s initial retort at dock? ‘It’s a ship. Not a boat.’”

“So, it’s not a gallon? A- a galley-on? It’s…” Some sudden, horrendous realization dawned on Kurt’s face. “Captain, can you do me a favor?”

Brightest stars and southern winds, what now?

“I can’t say I’ve heard your accent on anyone but the Nauts, and I’ve never gotten any of them to agree, so… can you say, ‘Avast, me hearties, thar be booty ahead!’ for me? Just once? I’ve got this bet with a friend, and…”

De Sardet’s turn for a jaw drop.

He merely turned towards the wheel. “Shawna!”

“Yes, Captain?”

“No need for single combat, I’m ceding command to you. It seems about time for me to take a swan dive into the depths and bid this cruel world goodbye. Take care of the crew, won’t you?”

A chorus of low chuckles from his fellow Nauts. 

Kurt flushed redder than a southern drunkard.

“Belay that, Captain! We’d all pass of boredom from a lack of elaborate mermaid tall-tales and smart-ass comments! Though, I will say, it would be nice to outfit the ship with all my charms!”

Shawna and her damned charms. When she became captain of her own ship, that thing would sink in the harbor from all the extra weight. Though, he had to say, they were beautiful, and the crew all swore they all made the air feel a little lighter.

But charms or no, it seemed his first mate’s rebuttal had peaked De Sardet’s interest. “‘Elaborate mermaid tall-tales’?”

Even Kurt stood a little taller, an intrigued look replacing his usual suspicious glare.

Well then…

He swallowed his laughter. “So, I once dated a man from the Shipwreck Islands…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok. So, I hate author's notes, but friends, we have come to a crossroads. 
> 
> This ship is headed to New Angsterdam™, a long, perilous journey that will include bad feels and later on violence, depression, and some dark shit overall. This is about the best happy stopping point I've got for quite a while, so if you are here for the fluff and only the fluff, or if you're going through some rough times in life and want to read lighter fare, I wanted to offer a warning in case you'd like to abandon ship before the waters get murky. Either way, I thank you for sticking with me until now!
> 
> If you do happen to be down for reading some general ouch that slowly leads into darker themes, and my terrible pun didn't scare you away for some reason... I will see you next week. Until then, take care. :)


	10. Unsung

His drawn-out, raunchy narrative hadn’t done anything to help Kurt’s low opinion of him, but Kurt’s opinion was hardly the one that mattered. Once he’d finished, De Sardet had cackled up a storm and had told him his tale was wonderful.

‘Wonderful.’ She liked his tales as she liked him. 

She hadn’t said that part, but her actions had spoken for her. 

Their routine had switched; every night but game night had become a night they’d met. And the shorter their time together grew, the more time she’d seemed to spend around him. She’d started making her days solely ‘on deck’ ones instead of leisurely ones, at first laughing and joking with the crew, then insisting on helping with minor things, a help that Flavia, Fina, Santiago, and the rest of the fore deck usuals gladly took her up on. With him supervising at first, so her help didn’t become ‘help’ as she made more work for everyone, of course.

But she never had. Despite her outward joking greenness with the terms, the woman somehow knew her shit. …At surface level, at least. As much as any non-sailor possibly could. And though he’d mocked her horrid knots and unsteady footing, each day, the woman had gotten a little better. 

Partly by picking his head at every damned free moment.

A few questions about sailing. Some technical terms. Some practical questions. Some impractical ones, including his favorite: ‘What happens if we hit a wave bigger than us?’ to which his answer had been, ‘We pray someone knows how to speak dolphin.’ Not the serious answer she’d wanted, but it had made her smile.

She’d had a few questions about ‘the boat’ too, which had always earned a splash of water in her direction from some mysterious wave stowed inside a vial in his pocket. A splash she’d bitch and moan about, as her grin spread from ear to ear. A few questions about his people. How to join the Nauts. How the ranks worked. How one was assigned to a ship or a command.

But at night, she’d stopped asking questions about him, leaving the information that had passed his lips as words that had done so willingly. Bits and pieces of his past, his hopes, his dreams: freely given, not yanked from him with persistence and pain. And though he’d long learned not to expect fairness in that regard, she’d done the same. For every tale he’d divulged, she’d reciprocated. For every opinion he’d shared, she’d chimed in. 

Still, secrets lingered between them. 

Things left unsaid, words left unspoken. Words he felt but could hardly say. What would be the point, besides to tear out both their hearts, stick them on a hook, and drop them in the ocean? Still, with every day that passed, he grew more certain of their truth.

But for many a night, they’d each picked light, happy topics, neither of them bringing up her impending departure. The kraken in the depths that they refused to acknowledge. The rogue wave she’d asked about that would swamp them both and rip her fingers from his grasp.

Until time had somehow sifted through their grasp, and it was the night before they docked in Teer Fradee. 

She stood nude in his room, half leaning against the wall and half against him, a cigar in her hand and laughter on her lips, as if she wouldn’t leave him behind tomorrow. “I still can’t get over this. The man’s worried about me having a lantern, but he has fucking cigars in his cabin!”

“I told you; there’s a reason why only I’m allowed to have them.”

“Because you’re a bloody hypocrite who holds the inventory logbooks?”

“First of all, eat a dick, and second of all, no, no I do not.” The benefits of having his own cabin: everything within was a thing Gustavo couldn’t touch and didn’t need to know about. “Tell the quartermaster at your own peril. I’m not above cruel and unusual punishment.”

De Sardet paused for a moment, hand over her mouth as she took a deep drag. She exhaled a cloud out the window that Lauro would most definitely tease him about later. “On the dick eating and the punishment: tell me when and where, Captain. But… you have a quartermaster?”

“I do indeed. Gustavo, that belligerent, paranoid bastard. Rarely leaves his office for fear of people tampering with his logs. The irony is, the crew wouldn’t be half as ruthless about their contraband if he wasn’t such a tight ass with the allotted cargo. Does his job well though. Rations everything fairly and keeps us all from starving. Quartermasters are always a pain, but take a voyage with a bad one, and you’ll appreciate them. The stills will almost always cover water, but there’s nothing quite like running out of food or salve at sea.”

“So, where  _ is _ his office? You know… in case I wanted to report a certain smuggler onboard.”

That rambunctious piss-ant hadn’t wanted an explanation at all.

She took a step far back enough that he couldn’t shove her, but not far enough to avoid his grab for the cigar. And though she pursed her lips in a pout, she recovered in no time, snatching the opened book from his bedside table instead. “All right, all right, that’s fair. Between that and the drink, I’ve had a little too much. You finish the cigar; I’ll finish the poem?”

“Fine.” A deep inhale, and he blew a slow stream of smoke out his porthole, saving a puff for a small smoke ring that hit De Sardet square on the nose. “But if you mimic Kurt’s voice again, I’m taking the book too.”

“The last verse had both ‘green’ and ‘blood’ in it, and the earlier one said ‘dicey!’  _ Dicey!  _ How could I not?”

Not a reference he was privy to.

With a gasp, she realized as much. “Oh, you sweet summer child, may you never have to know.” But a clear of her throat and a lick of her lips, and she regained her composure and resumed their poetry marathon. “‘But sonnet long and morning fair, to my dear love could not compare, and still I long for downy lips, her heart beneath my fingertips.’” She ran her fingers down the page as if the poem had spoken to her. A warm, if wistful smile, and she snapped the book shut. “And… that’s the last of them.”

Save one. 

A poem she hadn’t asked about. A poem he had yet to read to her. Another thing not to speak of.

And she must have known.

An unsettled sort of quiet fell between them. 

He finished the cigar, putting the butt out on a small tile. “That’s the last of them. We’ve no more tales to tell.”

“Don’t we?”

Not now. She couldn’t bring that poem up when-

But she set the book upon the table, reaching for him instead. Her fingertips traced a wave that ran up his side, cresting over a pierced nipple. Danced down three that washed between his abdominal muscles. Teased up one that pointed from his hips to somewhere she’d been preoccupied with earlier. “Tell me about these. Please. I-I want to know, I want to know everything, the stories of them all, every word, I-”

He hushed her with a gentle finger over his mouth. Wrenched the words from his throat. “We haven’t the time.”

“ _ Oh.”  _ For a moment, her gaze fell to the floorboards. Then… her zeal, her lust for knowledge lit her eyes once more. “Give me a summary. Make it quick, just a few words. I’ll trace, you name?”

A small, pained laugh escaped him. Not solely because she’d returned to prying. “You want me you give you a summary of ‘a few words’ of everything I’ve ever done at sea?”

But her look had turned pleading. Not a look she’d purposefully given.

“…All right. Erm… where…?”

Her fingers snapped to his chin.

“The face is for major accomplishments: anything people should see, should know about. The one you’re over is from my initiation. The straighter bits instead of curly waves mean I’m Sea-Given, not Sea-Born.”

Both her hands branched up his face, over the waves that tipped towards his nostrils. 

“First successful voyage on the high seas as a navigator.”

The segmented chop behind that, branching backwards towards his ears. 

“From top to bottom, making a strait crossing as a seaman, as a navigator, and as a captain.”

“So, your crew can sit for those now?”

“The top one, yes, though they’ll hardly sit still. That one’s nearly as much a bitch as the eye ones; it’s right over the cheekbone.” 

Sure enough, she sprang to the three lines headed towards his eyes.

“Years with the Nauts, in groups of five. Obviously done after the fact, not on the exact anniversary. Moves to lines above the brows when you hit twenty years. I’m due for another, whenever I get the chance.”

But De Sardet had moved on, tracing wavy squiggles leading down his neck.

“River crossings.”

Her brows knitted together. “You… really? A river?”

The damned things. “Long story.”

So, she moved on to the ones over his lip with a gentle touch. An intimate gesture.

His voice came out softer than he’d wanted. “Still initiation. The Sea-Born have chin only. We Sea-Given get the upper lip too.”

“Did it hurt?”

Her voice was so gentle, so sincere, he…

“Less than when Zengedia spat me up from the depths.” 

“It’s  _ Cengeden’dia,  _ you ass!” Sweet revenge. But as she cursed him, her melancholy fell away, revealing that breathtaking smile. Her touch grazed his chest, over the first of those markings she’d visited earlier. “But these?”

“The chest is reserved for crew-related accomplishments, namely, not getting them killed. A surprisingly hard feat to manage. The one your fingers are over was for my first lossless crossing as a captain.”

Her hands inched lower.

“The second.”

Lower still, tracing, trailing…

“You’re not getting this, are you?”

“Maybe I just want to touch you.”

And despite the implication, despite knowing her every question was one born of desperation to squeeze in as much knowledge as possible before she left him, he smiled. “Third.”

Her hands moved to his hips, to a wave that pointed lower. 

“That one arches all the way around my back and is for a specific accomplishment. A triumvirate of voyages that gets one an informal designation of ‘sea master’.”

“And, at twenty-five you made it? I…” Her eyes shined in the dim light, the corners of her mouth curling upwards. Pride. Not for herself. “Captain, that’s amazing.”

He took her hand, interrupting its guaranteed downward trail before she could have the idea. “Before twenty-five, technically. Think I’ve had that for… a year? A year and a half?”

And if his date-keeping was right, his birthday had passed a week ago. Early November. Not that he ever celebrated, though his initiation day fast approached, and that… she wouldn’t be here for.

But if she were…

He’d make certain they were in dock. He always did in late November, when half his crew’s initiation days came around. They’d go to some tavern (not the Coin Tavern, initiation days called for more class, damnit) or crash a bar where the wealthy visited, in part to watch nobility squirm. And, as always, he would break out the coin he’d saved for the occasion and spoil his people rotten. 

But this time…

He would wait until his crew was drunk enough to sway and sing shanties and piss off every other patron until they left, and then… while the alcohol gave him courage and he could pass off what his crewmen saw as a hallucination from drink, he’d dance with her. He’d show her all the things he’d learned at ports from watching others, but that he’d never had the chance to share with anyone himself. He wouldn’t be as good as the men she’d danced with. Wouldn’t be as graceful. 

She wouldn’t mind, because De Sardet didn’t mind those sorts of things. She didn’t begrudge him experience or status he didn’t have, she appreciated him, was proud of him for what he  _ had _ done. And, at the end of the night, she’d come home with him, back to the ship, and they’d laugh, and they’d kiss, and he’d call her…

Call her…

“Captain?”

He’d already cast his damned heart into the ocean. “Yes, De Sardet?”

“What about the ones on your back?”

“Tattoos earned for sailing in extreme weather.” 

“Now those, I have to have the full stories.” A hand flew to his shoulder, making to spin him around. “I need to know every ridiculous adventure that-”

He grabbed her hand. Held it to his skin. All these questions… the more he divulged, the more she knew that no other lover had cared to ask, the less he’d be able to let her go tomorrow. “Again, not enough time.” He ran his hand down her thigh, earning a sharp breath and a shiver. Traced over her tattoo, that mysterious sea serpent snarling at him in warning. “Can it be your turn?”

“But you have so many tales, and I only have one… you’ll bore of me if you know it.”

A lie. She had so many tales left to tell him. 

And he… hadn’t the time for them all. He hadn’t the time for half of them. “My dear Lady… how could I ever grow bored of you?”

“You won’t get the chance to.”

He closed his eyes. Took a deep, wavering breath.

She did the same, her head falling against his chest, a drop of water rolling towards his abdomen.

_ No. _

“Hey, hey… none of that.” Blinking until his own eyes dry, he then took her by the chin, gently pushing her head up towards his. “It’s all right. It’ll be all right. You’ll have a whole new island to explore. Fresh food and fresh fruit instead of all this canned rubbish. Lots of friends to make. Taverns to visit. Men and women to ravage.”

She laughed, a broken, snorted thing that seized his heart and twisted. Put her hand to her nose in an adorable gesture of embarrassment. “Yes. Yes, I will. But I…” Her joy disappeared once more, leaving her with downward brows and a trembling lip. “Captain, I won’t have you there with me.”

And at that, he snatched her close to him once more, hiding his head in his neck so she couldn’t look at him. Held her there for a long, poignant moment until tears wouldn’t escape him. Far too long a moment. “De Sardet… how about that story? If you have a shanty I haven’t heard, I can’t very well let that be.”

Silence, save the wind that blew them along the ocean. A wind he’d always wanted at his back that now, he’d give anything to halt for a little while.

“It’s um…” A clear of her throat. A wipe of her eyes, the whites now tinged with pink. A beautiful and loathsome color that didn’t belong on her. Not there. “It’s not quite a shanty. More of a tale, a parable, a… a story. I’ve been told I can’t sing to save my life anyhow; if it were a shanty, you wouldn’t want to hear it from me.”

“In a chorus, it doesn’t matter. Hardly any of us can.”

A white lie. 

All right, maybe not so white a lie, though De Sardet didn’t have to know that a bunch of sailors could out-sing her.

Flavia had a small, cute voice that didn’t fit her. Salem, though he rarely spoke, had one that rang like a bell. Shawna, a high soprano that he’d sometimes hear at night offering praises to the moon, to the water. Jonas could carry a tune with the best of them when his voice didn’t break mid-song. And, ironically, Lauro had the strongest voice of them all, leading them through most their shanties with perfect pitch. 

Perhaps why the man had latched onto a nun. The world may never know.

De Sardet dragged him back towards his bed, collapsing onto it and pulling him close. Buried her hands in his hair. “Well… your initial guess was right. My tattoo is of  _ Cengeden’dia _ , a Teer-Fraddian sea god. The tale I heard was… was… it’s long.”

He smiled. Put a hand to her jaw. “We have time enough for that. Not enough for me to detail my every story, but for this… we have the time.”

So, with a long outbreath, she started. “Long ago, there lived a man and a woman in a small fishing village by the sea. They led their people together, and the love they shared for each other, the love they shared for the ocean, made their tribe flourish. For many years, they fished from the shores and took in a prosperous bounty but never ventured into the waves for respect of their power.

“And then, a tribe of violent earth worshippers came for them. Vile, greedy people that raided their village. The sea tribe fought hard, but they were no match for the enemy tribe’s magic, and when the battle was finished, few of the sea tribe were left standing, and none could say where their enemies had gone. None could say where those not killed in the fighting had gone, and among the missing… the chief’s beloved.

“Wounded of body, but more so of heart, he vowed to find his people and took himself and his remaining tribesmen to war, fighting with curved, poisoned blades and piercing stone arrows. But no matter how many villages they conquered, no matter how many people they questioned, none spoke a word for fear of the magic users.

“What little of his tribesmen remained left. Lost faith and joined the other villages. And so, as desperate men tend to do, the chief prayed. He prayed to the god of the hunt for aid in locating his love. To the god of the trees to shroud her head. Even to the Earth Father that she had not yet returned to the ground, offering his soul in exchange if He didn’t take her. But none of them answered, for the gods are jealous by nature, and the man had dedicated his life to the sea. So, he retired to his former village, alone.

“When finally, a great sickness came for the ocean, and the waters churned black, and the fish died, he prayed to the Sea God to take away his misery and swallow him whole. And with a torrent of water that swept him off his feet,  _ Cengeden’dia _ emerged with great, blue eyes and a voice that howled like the wind. A voice that told him not to be afraid. 

“The Serpent asked why the man had begged for death, and so, the man told him of the water turned to mud and his lost love. And as He looked to the oceans,  _ Cengeden’dia _ answered, ‘I know of these traitors, and though I wish not to war with the Earth Father, the time for action has come, for the land has breached into my domain. I know where she is. I know where they will be.’ Never had the man held such joy.

“So, the sea went to war with the land.  _ Cengeden’dia _ mustered all his strength and brought a great hurricane the likes of which the world had never seen, its arms spreading from the shore far out into the sea. And through it all, the man held onto the tallest tree, and he endured. He drank the water upon its fronds for days, and when the ocean parted and cleared once more, he walked down to the sea and called upon the Sea God.

“Again,  _ Cengeden’dia _ answered, and when the man asked of his beloved, he told her the truth: ‘The land has lost. I broke its hold upon the water and took her back to where she belongs. She is with me now. She is home.’”

De Sardet paused, looking to him with a satisfied smile on her face.

Not just ‘paused’.

Stopped.

“That’s it? That the end? His lover dies a storm, and the man never holds her again?” Stars, what a grim tale. “No wonder I’ve never heard it; you’d never catch a sailor preaching something so awful on the ocean!”

She whacked him on the arm, across a spiraled tattoo she hadn’t gotten the chance to ask about. “It’s not ‘awful’! His lover is free! The sea god took her back into his embrace; it’s beautiful and poetic.”

“It’s morbid and sad! And you’ve a tattoo of it! How did I ever sleep with you with that awful story emblazoned upon your skin?”

A jibe that she took more offense to than he’d intended. With a squawk of a disgruntled noise, she took her arms from him, crossing them about her own chest. “I’ll have you know a Naut captain told me that story. You’re practically required to like it.”

_ What? _

Now there was… “‘A Naut captain?’ When have you met another Naut captain?”

De Sardet flushed all the way down her neck and didn’t meet his gaze.

Oh… this could be interesting.

“’I’ve only one tale’… I knew that was bullshit. My dear Lady, you  _ do _ have a type.”

Another shove, and she mounted him, pinning him to the bed with her hands threaded through his nipple rings. A gesture that put her jaw, her musculature, her pierced breasts  _ so  _ beautifully on display… “It wasn’t like that! It was… it was…” Some horrid idea sprang to life inside her eyes with an unholy glimmer. “I’ll trade you. My Naut story for your favorite poem.”

Shit.

_ Shit,  _ of course she would… 

He didn’t need to know. Didn’t need to know if she’d met some captain on shore leave and had fallen for him or her in a week, as Kurt seemed to have implied. Or maybe, she’d held a relationship in secret, with love letters and gift exchanges and torrid explosions of passion whenever they were reunited. 

Maybe… maybe she’d do that for him.

No!

No, no, no! Stupid, stupid to think, stupid to hope that…

He’d read damned near an entire book of poems with the woman. What further damage could one more do?

He sighed.

She grinned.

“Fine.”

“Yes!” Slapping his chest as one might a table after a stellar round of poker, she didn’t move off him. Still sat there, bare as anything, her legs spread over him, her sex flush with his skin. “Well, there I was, in-”

“You’re not going to move? This is awfully distracting.”

She did move. The wench scooted lower, obscuring the crests of the waves that sprang from his hips, settling the curve of her ass against the curve of his cock.

“Ungh. De Sardet, I fucking hate you.”

“Feeling’s mutual, Captain.”

That filthy little- oh, how he would turn her over after this, spread her legs, and sink himself so deep into her that she’d-

“My first crush was a Naut captain.”

Enough to put a hold on his obscene thoughts. 

‘First crush’ implied young. She had said she’d used to watch the ships at dock, was it from then?

“My cousin visited with her children when I was… fifteen, sixteen? Of course, I’d seen a baby before but never a newborn. It was…” De Sardet made a face much like one would if their drink had been mixed far too strong. Or had been unexpectedly served a hoppy ale instead of cider. “Wrinkled, sallow, and… ugly. I wasn’t stupid; I’d heard women give birth and talk about how horrible it was, and all I could think of was… for that? For this discolored, smelly potato?”

He burst into laughter. “Just lay it all out, De Sardet.”

“You know what, I fucking will, because you won’t judge me for it like literally everyone else. As if it’s some crime not to want… anyhow, they bid me to hold him, and I swear to you, the moment that thing touched my arms, woosh! A fountain of yellow, fragrant vomit: some hellish projectile from its mouth, damn near into mine.” Another sour face from his lover. A face at the expression on his. “Laugh it up, but if you were there, you’d have been crying.”

“I- as a sympathetic vomiter, I have no doubt of that.”

“You… wait a moment, how? A sympathetic vomiter is a captain on the high seas?”

“A captain who is insistent on salving anyone on deck, if you’ll remember. But please, continue.”

Her brows drew into a frown. “Where was I?”

“Discolored potatoes.”

“Ah, yes. So, after the child puked on me, my mother laughed at me and said, ‘You’d better get used to it! They’ll be yours in ten years! I could see you with four or five of them- beautiful little babies like hers!’ And the moment my cousin took her child back, I ran. I ran all the way to the docks, stripped down to my petticoat, and jumped straight into the water.”

“I hardly blame you. Puke isn’t a smell that washes out without either saltwater or alcohol.”

But she hesitated. Gnawed upon her finger. “Not so much that. I… um… I realized I had never seen a noble woman without children, and my mother had said, ‘four or five’. That was average. Some had more. So, to start, ten years of my life, covered in puke and piss and shit and… that’s not counting carrying the damned things and all the horrors that come with that… did you know, in birth, women have torn themselves all the way up to their…” Her fingers dancing to where their bodies met, a shiver wracked her form. “I was terrified. That was the first of many times I took a glimpse of what the future held for me and hated it.”

To stay and be expected to… no wonder she’d never told them of her sterility.

“I don’t understand…” Sensitive topic. Bad, bad idea to bring it up, but… “De Sardet, why not leave?”

She danced her fingers across his collarbone. Played a little tune only she knew on a piano only she saw. Finally spoke after an audible bite of her lip. “I was his sister’s only daughter. The Prince d’Orsay’s niece. Do you know how far I’d have to go to escape his reach? Even then, who would take in a girl that’s a risk already, with no applicable skills? I couldn’t serve a Noble’s household; he’d get to them. Kitchens don’t care that you know poker and how to read people if you can’t cook. Few jobs are open to women: my only choice was to sell my body or my soul.”

But she’d missed the most obvious- “The Nauts don’t care if you’re a woman or man; you could have joined us. Could have-”

“Captain, I tried. Four separate times, I tried.”

She’d…

What? “And the admiral…?”

“Admiral Contra said as part of a contract with the Prince himself, he couldn’t take me. I begged him until he got tired of seeing me and ordered the door guards not to let me in. But that’s another story.”

And here, he’d first thought that she’d lamented her position and had done nothing to change it. The poor woman had looked down every alleyway and still hadn’t found a way out. Stars, no wonder she’d been reticent to talk about it. No wonder she’d taken such offense to his barbs. “De Sardet, I didn’t know, I- I’m sorry that I ever-”

She laid a calloused finger across his lips. “It’s all right. Like you said, you didn’t know.”

“But I assumed anyway.”

“You’re a captain, not a diplomat. If you don’t make split-second assumptions and decisions, people die.”

She wasn’t wrong. 

Not that excused his behavior, nor his interruption of her story to talk about himself, and-  _ damn him-  _ and- “Erm… so back to your tale, a Naut comforted you?”

A see-saw motion of her head indicated he’d been at least half right. “Ish. In my panic, the only thing that occurred to me was to get as far away from all of that as possible, so I hid in a box and was put onto a ship for transport. Stuffed myself in between a bunch of tea… I was sick as a dog for days, vomiting through a porthole, pushing aside a cannon to do it, but then, I grew used to the rocking. I’d sneak around the ship once everyone else had gone to sleep, pretending I was a pirate and-”

A spurt of her own bright laughter broke her tale. “You know, I said I wasn’t stupid, but I was. One day, I was less careful than usual. Peeped my head up onto deck; I think the hair gave me away. Two Nauts saw me: these half-dressed, lithe sailors, a man and woman in white and blue, covered in tattoos and… and I knew two things right then: that I was attracted to both men and women, and that I was in deep shit.”

He couldn’t help but grin and sigh. “Why is always a moment like that? A sudden whack of realization at an inopportune time that says, ‘you’re as straight as a bottle, and that’s how you’ve always been, you dumbass.’”

“So, they-” But De Sardet stopped, a hand splayed over his chest. Over his heart. “Wait a minute, you too?”

“On the docks of Summerset Isle. Fourteen years in me, maybe. Similar circumstances: I wasn’t supposed to leave the ship. Of course, I did, and… I only wanted to explore. Wanted to see the world.” To see the world outside wooden walls. “And the first thing I saw was the dock workers. Shirtless men, laboring in the heat, heaving things to and from the hold. Women, down to pants and a band ‘cross their chest, equally as muscular and as covered in sweat as the men. I couldn’t decide who to stare at more. And before my captain grabbed me by the ear and dragged me back aboard, I realized that I enjoy definition, no matter who it’s on.”

She leaned into him, giving a wistful sigh into his shoulder. “Isn’t that the truth? But you’re right, I do have a type. Should have known I’d end up here from the moment you opened your mouth. Muscular, tattooed, and sarcastic. What a fuckable combination.”

“Says the tanned, toned, witty woman who can nearly drink as much as me and holds her own in poker with my crew. Some damned noble you are.”

And had they met on shore, he would have only lusted after her. Had a few impure thoughts, maybe a lewd dream, and that was all. He wouldn’t have dared approach her. Wouldn’t have spoken a word. But out here… 

The sea was an equalizer. While they were on the ocean, she wasn’t a noble anymore, just a woman. A status that would soon change.

He cleared his throat to shove down the lump within it. “But what happened? You were a security risk; you could have been executed.”

“They brought me to the captain. And sixteen years old, a noble’s daughter…? He could have kept me, and no one would have known. Could have ransomed me for whatever he wanted… but he didn’t. He took me under his wing; they all did. I slept in a hammock like the rest of the crew, and no one so much as touched me, beyond a good slap on the back when I got something right. 

“But they did teach me. They told me about the ship, the ocean, the waves, the tides- as much as one could learn in six months. That’s how I know what little I know. The terms. The sea stories. Not to go near the helm. A bit of how to sail, not that my knots are any more than shit.”

At this point, they were better than Lauro’s. He’d take her on as a seaman in a heartbeat, and not because of their current arrangement. De Sardet may have been trained in all the wrong areas, but he’d be damned if she wasn’t a quick study.

“But we did eventually dock back in Sérène, and though he wouldn’t alter course to drop me off, the captain did kick me from the ship with a smile when we returned. My first crush took me on a whirlwind adventure, and then bade me goodbye. But a piece of that…” Her eyes fogged over, some storm brewing within them. “…a piece of that, I carried with me. The Naut motto, right? ‘We know no master-’”

“But the sea.” Said with two voices. A small, unsung shanty of their own.

One that turned the mist in her eyes to dew. She held a hand to his cheek, tracing the wave there. “Captain, I… I don’t want to go.”

He’d never shut his eyes so fast. “De Sardet, I don’t…. I can’t…”

But he couldn’t. Couldn’t lose it here. Not now. 

Here, like on deck, he couldn’t show fear. If he did, she’d lose it too. 

He couldn’t do that to her. 

A creeping touch down her arm, and he took her hand in his. Pressed it to his lips as the knot in his stomach twisted all the more. “The world keeps turning, no matter what we want. There’s always another tide.”

With a furrow of her brow and low, mouthed words, he lost her. For a few moments, anyhow. 

And then, she looked back to him, some unspoken idea lighting her eyes. “Where are you going after this, again? You mentioned a once around the island.”

“And then back to Sérène, yes.”

“So that’s… six months? A year?”

“Few months around the island, six more to the continent, plus one-ish do the rounds there, then around five to get back. So… a year and a half, if everything goes well.”

“And then you’ll return to New Sérène?”

Where was she going with this? “No need to worry; it’s an easy journey, I’ve done it some-”

A finger over his lips again, one he could tolerate there forever, she hushed him. “You know what you’re doing; I’m not worried . Constantin on the other hand… I know you don’t think it, but he needs my help for a while. Someone who’s on his side, who believes in him-”

“Oh, after the Pulley Incident yesterday, I believe you; he needs someone with him who knows what the hell is going on so he doesn’t get himself killed. But what’s that have to do with me?”

De Sardet narrowed her eyes at him through her grin. “You’re lucky you’re hotter than sin. As I was saying… Constantin needs my help, for now. But when you get back-”

A wind from the porthole bustled ‘round the room before heading back out to sea, taking her bravado with it.

And when it left, she wasn’t bold but bare. The wind had whipped her mask away, and before him sat a girl of sixteen who didn’t want to return to a household of people who had planned her entire life for her. To a household in which she’d seemed to have had as much agency and freedom as his damned desk chair. Bolted to the boards below. “When you… um… when you end up in port again… if there happened to be a particularly heavy box of tea…”

“You’re asking if I would throw it in the harbor to make a ‘cup’ for your sea god?”

“No! You-” A whack. “Ass!” Another. “I’m trying to be serious, and you’re-”

He caught her hand in his own and her lips with his. Kissed her until he ran out of air, damn his stuffy nose along with his emotions, and broke from her, gasping.

But that hadn’t made her feel better. 

Like she had for the poem, she pleaded with her eyes, her lips brushing against his. “If there were a box full of tea and a… certain Congregation Legate, would you drop me off next time you hit port? Toss me in the ocean so your quartermaster didn’t fuss?”

A pipe dream. A beautiful, foolish pipe dream, one he’d learned long ago not to have. 

She wouldn’t wait for him. 

They never did. 

And even if she would, he couldn’t take her from her life, from where she belonged. She’d finally gotten away from the bulk of her family, and in New Sérène… she would have the chance to truly shine. To put all her training to use. Out here on the sea, it would all go to waste, and her suffering would have been for naught. She was someone on land, and here… she would be no one. 

He’d been no one for long enough to know it wasn’t a pleasant feeling.

Besides, Altair only knew her cousin couldn’t handle diplomacy on his own if he could hardly remember not to venture near the helm. Not to get in the way of the netting. Not to climb slippery spars, as adorable as his enthusiasm had been. The man tried, but beyond that…

He hadn’t much nice to say. And as hopeless a romantic as he was, he also couldn’t say he was selfish. “If we’re loading for a months-long journey, it would be a crate, Legate. Not a box.”

Though she smiled, it didn’t meet her eyes. Still, they begged him. “Captain…?”

“I-” Maybe… maybe she needed the honesty he was loath to give. “De Sardet, if somehow you wound up on my ship again, I’m not certain I’d have the strength to let you go.”

Finally, her smile warmed. “Then, maybe I’ll end up there, crafty bitch that I am.”

So, he laughed with her. Stuttered laughter that became stuttered kisses that she graced up and down his cheeks, over his tattoos. A thanksgiving for the knowledge he’d divulged to her. Kisses that he planted on her cheekbones, her chin, her nose. A claim, his claim, for some stunning woman or rugged man to wash away. 

And after some number of minutes, after she’d pulled him under with her and strangled all the air from him, she broke away, a hand upon his lips the only thing that stopped him from giving chase. “You’re guiding us into port, aren’t you?”

He managed a nod.

“You’ll need to be on deck early.”

…Need she remind him?

She peered out the window. Still night. “How early, exactly? 

Still night.

And as long as the sun slept below the horizon, she belonged to him.

He pulled her back into the roil. Tangled his fingers in the knots of her hair, her intake of breath pulling the air from his lungs. “Once more, my Lady, like how we started. Once more, before the tides pull us apart.” 

Like any tempest tempted to make ruin, she obliged.


	11. Too Much?

She’d fallen asleep upon his chest, her hand intertwined with his.

He hadn’t the heart to move her, nor the heart to shut his eyes and leave her, so he’d stayed awake and stared. He’d stayed awake and had stared at her in some misguided attempt to memorize every bit of her he could.

‘_ …Worships the sun that shines across her surface _

_ And yet he knows the terror she belies _…’

But this sunrise wasn’t worthy of worship. It was a harsh, cruel, blinding thing that he would sell his soul to never see come. But it would.

And it did.

That cursed light roused her too, and she bolted up with a start, a whirlpool of emotions flashing across her face ‘til her gaze finally fell upon the window. “It’s dawn.” She closed her eyes. Swallowed. “Need you be on deck?”

“Not ‘til sunrise. We have a few minutes. Not enough time for another go, but-”

Her abrupt slap was still kinder than the sun’s first rays. “The poem! You promised, I-” And she threw herself sideways, sprawling across both him and his bed, her grasp straining for the book.

He extended a hand and, with the very tip of his middle finger, nudged it away.

A huff of outrage. She yanked the pillow from under his head and pelted him with it. And when he’d stopped laughing enough to unbury himself once more, he found her next to him, a smile on her face and his book clasped to her chest. Bequeathing it, she shut her eyes, then felt for the dog-eared page and opened it upon his stomach with the crack of a spine and a rush of biblichor.

He’d run out of excuses. Unless… “What if I gave you the book, and you read the poem on your own later?”

She shoved him. Eyes snapping open, she mounted him as she had last night, though thankfully, her hips sat a little higher this time. “I’m not letting you leave unless you read me that damned poem.”

An interesting choice of words. 

A grin creeping up his face enough to make her raise her eyebrows, he shut Fronds of Palm and set it to the side. Grabbed both her wrists. Snaked his ankles about hers. Forced her backwards and against the mattress so hard that all her breath left her. A bit of old grappling knowledge that he’d used in the bedroom more than in fights. And though his old captain would have shamed him, that was a fact he held no shame for. “Lady De Sardet, I’m afraid that’s not up to you.”

Too quiet.

Too much?

…No.

Wide eyes searched his face but held no fear. “How are you so strong?”

“Spend your entire life hauling cargo and slinging yourself up the rigging, then ask that question again. I’m sure you’ve trained often, but this…” He nodded his head towards the deck they’d both soon occupy. “This isn’t something I do in my spare time; this is my life.”

“And what a life it is.”

Said with no sarcasm, though he would have used it. “I wouldn’t trade it for the world, don’t misunderstand me, but it’s not as glamorous as you’re thinking.”

“Captain, there is nothing glamorous about standing on some boards and shitting into the sea, but I’ll be damned if I wouldn’t switch you in a heartbeat.”

“’Legate Vasco’ hardly has the same ring to it. Besides, you’d sell me to the nobles? Make me kiss the asses of all those urchins?”

She brought her thumb over his initiation mark, running it up towards his lips. Took her time tracing every crease. “Never. But you’re trying to get me off-topic.”

“Is it working?”

“You promised!”

“I know I did, but…” He couldn’t lie like that. Not to her. “What if you hate it?”

Her hand moved to his cheek. Caressed it, a gentle touch he’d kill to relax into for an eternity. “Captain, if it’s your favorite, I won’t hate it. It could be one word, and I’d love it still.”

‘Love’.

A strong word.

Too much?

Too much for his thudding heart.

He pulled his book from beside them. Opened to the dog-eared page. Took a breath, some sea snake mucking about within his gut.

“‘A sailor knows the joys the sea can bring

He loves the shells that wash in with the tide

Worships the sun that shines across her surface

And yet he knows the terror she belies.

For no man sails that has not lost a friend

That has not lost a brother to her bite.

The sea is both a fine and fickle mistress,

And truly most alluring is her might.

Some say the tide is cruel and brash, uncaring,

But in its wake, it fills in every hole.

And as the sea, she carves and shapes the land,

So too does she shape every sailor’s soul.

So, they may call him gruff and mad and foolish,

But never long can man and ocean part,

For deep inside, her winds, her waves, they soothe him.

And every tempest owns a sailor’s heart.’”

Silence.

A single tear rolled down her cheek. “It’s _ beautiful _. I… Captain, I…”

“Take it.”

“What?”

He shut the book. Wiped the blighted water from her cheek with one hand and offered it to her with the other. “Take it with you.”

Her jaw dropped. “But you may not find another, there may not be another, and if that’s your favorite poem, and it’s not in the base edition, and I-”

“I have it memorized. Besides, I’ll find another copy. I get around far more than you do.”

Still, she hesitated.

“De Sardet, I won’t ask a third time.”

Never had he seen her move so fast. She plucked the book from his outstretched hand, snatching it to her chest. Looked as if she’d shocked herself with her burst of energy as a sudden flush of red crept into her cheeks. “I… I want to say that…” Her mouth still open, no words came out. “I… thank you.”

“You’re welcome, My Fair Lady.”

A snarl came from the woman beneath him. “We aren’t nearly at dock; you need to cut out the ‘La-”

A knock upon his door.

They both froze.

“Captain, you awake? You going to guide us in, or you want that I should do it? I mean, I have done it once, but once is hardly enough to-”

“I’ll be right there, Shawna. Just need a minute.”

The footsteps retreated. 

The tide truly waited for no one.

Without a word, he stood and dressed, as did she. He cleaned his teeth, then spat the water into a bucket that he passed to De Sardet so she could do the same, shaving what little stubble he’d grown overnight as she brushed. Picked up his tub of kohl after and paused. 

Maybe… maybe not today. And he’d best step out before he lost the will to. “De Sardet, I can knock when everyone’s-”

“I’ll head out with you. They can think what they want.”

Really? She didn’t care? Or… she _ did _, enough not to mind what anyone on deck might say?

De Sardet approached and ran her finger in a gentle crescent under his eye. “No more liner?”

Kohl. Kohl, not liner. 

“Not today.” And he turned to-

“Captain, wait!”

He took a deep breath in. “De Sardet, the longer we stay…”

“I know. I just…” A gentle hand upon the pauldron of his coat, she turned him around. Fretted with her words, her mouth opening and closing like a fish gasping for air despite being surrounded by it. “I’m not only here to help Constantin with governance.”

What?

Then, why…?

“The Prince d’Orsay knows the natives are immune like your people are. When strong-arming the Nauts for your cure didn’t work, he decided to send me here.”

‘For your cure’? “But we have no ‘cure’, we just… don’t get the malichor. It works that way with a few diseases, despite the rumors.” As if their time at sea boosted their immunity to everything save scurvy, though the invention of canning had done wonders for that, he’d been told. “Does he think that these people here will pass you some local flora that will somehow make the six-month trip back? That, if they do have a cure, they’ll trust an outsider with it? Or does he want to kidnap some innocent, local healer and interrogate them for answers they’ll never give?”

A fool’s errand, all of it, but wasting resources hardly sounded like the Prince d’Orsay. The man was a sack of pus that presented as human, but one that had evolved neurons somehow. From what he’d heard in ports, the malichor was a disease most common amongst the lower class. Why would he bother with it? Unless… the Prince simply wanted the fame? To find an answer before the Bridge Alliance? 

…To meter out the cure himself, perhaps?

A shitty notion that sounded far more in character. “De Sardet, If you think the man wants to find a cure and charge people for it, you have a responsibility not to give it to him. Hell, give it to us; we’ll hand it out at ports and-”

“His motives aren’t terrible for once.” De Sardet swallowed, her gaze sweeping the floorboards as if a marble had rolled between them. But those had long since been stowed away. “His sister has it. The malichor.”

“His… sister? But that’s-” Oh, shit. “Your _ mother? _Your mother has it?”

Slowly, she nodded. Because one thing was blatantly obvious: her mother would die before De Sardet could ever see her again. 

Noble or not… no one deserved to catch the malichor. An awful, wasting disease that turned the blood blacker than tainted water and left people burning alive, gasping for air. 

And she’d been sent away, knowing that hope for stopping it rested on her. That she’d been entrusted with…

She took in a fumbling breath as if she had the disease herself. “I hated her actions. Hated what she did to me. But… she cared, acted out of love, so I couldn’t hate her. And when the Prince told me I had to leave, he knew what it meant. Knew sending me away meant I wouldn’t be able to see her off. He said… said that he ‘couldn’t lose more of his people, even if it meant I had to go.’ Like you said, gods forbid he have to suffer.”

Stars, and he’d thought he couldn’t detest nobility any more.

De Sardet sniffed, her hand covering those soft lips of hers. Lips that probably trembled as her brows did. 

A sight that, once again, he was loath to see. “Come here. De Sardet, come here.”

She did, burying her head in the crook of his neck. 

For a long, poignant moment, he held her, and as always, she drew back renewed, fire lit in her eyes. “So, you _ must _ stay safe, do you hear me? No blaze of glory deaths at sea, no suddenly discovering you can catch deadly diseases; you have to stay safe, because unlike the Prince d’Orsay, I know loss. Too much so, I- I lost my father when I was young, I’ve lost my mother now too, and I can’t lose anymore people that I l…like. That I… care about, that- that…”

She couldn’t say it either. 

But she felt it too. Sure as the moon rose each night, she felt it too.

She held a hand out to him, in between their chests. “Promise me. Promise me you’ll come back safe.”

“You know I can’t-”

“Then, lie to me. Please. _ Please _, Captain, I…”

Anything. Anything to stop her from shedding another tear. 

He took her hand, grasping it in his own. Their fingers intertwined, tied in a knot like one used for the bowline: fixed, secure, and easy to undo. “I promise.”

She sniffed for a moment more. Wiped dry her eyes. “Good. And if you break that promise, I’ll fucking dig you up and kill you again.”

“There’ll be no digging to do, De Sardet. Nauts are buried at sea.”

Her eyes narrowing, she drew close to him, pressing their noses together. “‘It’s a _ ship _, De Sardet.’ ‘Wake, not wash.’ ‘Mattress on the sloop.’ ‘We’re not buried on land…’ I fucking hate you.”

“I fucking hate you too.”

She kissed him hard, parting his lips with her tongue and without her usual teasing wordless question. Her hands knotted in his coat. His fingers knotted in her hair. A desperate, hungry kiss that he needed to deepen. 

He pressed her into his door, his fingers at her blouse again because fuck it, once more couldn’t hurt, couldn’t-

A knock.

She nearly bit his tongue.

They broke, her eyes as wide as his surely would be.

“Captain? You all right in there?”

Shawna again.

Stars damn it all to hell- “I’m fine, I just need a minute.”

“…You sure about that? You said that the last time. Cut yourself shaving? Finishing up a wank?”

“Piss off, Shawna.”

“Can I use the quarter gallery, Captain? Might be fun! Change of scenery and…”

A hand clamped over her mouth, De Sardet simply stood in front of him, her form shaking with silent laughter.

“Did you not hear the, ‘I need a minute’? Or should I translate that into land terms like I have to do for De Sar-”

She grabbed his ear, his pierced one, and yanked hard.

“-ow, you bitch!”

De Sardet’s dropped both her hands, frantically mouthing her apologies. 

Shit!

Shit, he’d said that aloud!

A long, low whistle sounded from outside the door. “Hooooly hell, Salem owes me a bottle of brandy and some lapis lazuli.”

Damn her meddling- 

De Sardet walking onto deck with him and letting the others draw their own conclusions was entirely different than all but confirming to his first mate that he’d been attempting to shove his tongue down the Legate’s throat. “Say a word, Shawna, and I will-”

But De Sardet grabbed him by the collar and flipped their positions, turning his words into a moan only muffled by her lips. She pinned him between her body and the door, lining them up in all the right places like she had last night. Like he had this morning. Like they had many times and wouldn’t have the chance to do again. Instead of killing the mood, instead of having that fact make him want to scream and cry, it made him all the hungrier for her.

One couldn’t afford to be upset or distraught in a position of command. But lustful? Greedy? Damn him, that was all he was.

As his fingers fell to her blouse again, she pulled back from him, a racy smile upon her face, and her thumb running down his chin. “Like you all say, ‘belay that’, Shawna. Gossip how you will, but could you blame me?”

Quiet outside the door. De Sardet had shocked his first mate into silence. 

Her touch creeping up his cheek, she pressed their foreheads together. “I’d love to continue, but Shawna’s right. We should be on deck.” 

They… should. After he adjusted himself so, if the man happened to be on deck for once in his life, Gustavo wouldn’t accuse him of smuggling an extra pistol to Teer Fradee.

Of course, she noticed. Of course, she winced as if she hadn’t expected that much of a reaction to her actions. “Too much?” 

“Not enough.” His voice came out far huskier than he’d wanted, damn him. But no wonder. The longer he stayed, the less he wanted to leave. “Not nearly enough.”

He opened the door to an agape Shawna with De Sardet following close on his heels, the both of them emerging from the hall to a largely manned deck and many, many pairs of eyes. Something he could comfortably say he’d never done before. Not with a lover.

Flavia’s jaw fell open.

Salem’s brows disappeared into his hairline.

A cat call drifted in on the wind from the Crow’s Nest. 

He’d kill the bastard. “Still not too close to land to keelhaul you, Lauro!”

“Bite me, Captain!”

Oh, but he’d left himself wide open for-

“Stars damn me to the trenches, I did it _ again! _ Freaking son of a…”

And he hadn’t had to say a single word.

Still, some… forty pairs of eyeballs fixated upon them. 

He could fix that. “The _ hell _ do you all think you’re doing? We need the sails reefed, the decks scrubbed, all the cargo that Gustavo shouldn’t know about packed away, and you’re all standing here, staring at me like you’ve nothing to do? I could add a second scouring of the weather deck onto that list, if you’d like! You’ve all got toothbrushes!”

But he needn’t have finished his elaborate tirade. The crew had scattered at the halfway point, three quarters of them rushing towards the rigging and the rest below deck to stow away whatever they’d managed to bring aboard. De Sardet had been one of the ones that had fled below, but she’d be back.

…She’d be back.

He made his way to the wheel, then clapped a hand to Shawna’s shoulder, nearly making her jump from her skin. “Relieved, sailor. Go pack away your charms.”

And, wind in his face, his hands closing over wooden spokes, he took the wheel for the slow and steady sail into Teer Fradee. 


	12. Marina

The journey was tedious but not unpleasant. Not with the crew in high spirits, the weather fairer than he’d ever seen around Teer Fradee- save the usual opening layer of mist- and De Sardet as close to him as she could be without violating Naut protocol. He’d debated on saying ‘fuck it’ and telling her to come next to him anyhow, but then she’d start asking questions about the compass and the charts and the barometer behind him, and he’d have to fulfill his promise of throwing her overboard. Not something he was prepared to do. 

Slowly but surely, they crept towards the port, the second officer who had long since lost his first name bitching at him to lower the sails the entire time. Though ‘bitching’ was a rather kind word for it. ‘Literally vomiting unease into his ear’ would have been a more accurate turn of phrase.

He ignored Javier until the sun shone high above them and they’d nearly reached the marker where the sea would take them in. And then… he let go of the wheel. 

An action Javier noted, one that made him hyperventilate, because the man was higher strung than a dolphin on cocaine. “Captain, you- you can’t…with no control… we’re down to the jib and the spanker, and-”

“And we’re running downwind. You truly want me to lower the sails? Shoot us in, like a bullet from a chamber?”

The man’s mouth opened but nothing came out, though he threw frequent glances to the empty helm, his thirty-five-year mark disappearing into the brim of his hat. “Captain Vasco, I only think it would be prudent that-”

“How many years do you have in you, Second Officer?”

“What? What does that have to do with…” Javier brought a gloved hand to his mouth, gnawing at fingernails his teeth couldn’t actually reach. “Can- can you please retake the helm? There’s a reef to our starboard-”

“Well aware; I see it too.” The shallows of the reef wouldn’t start for miles unless Fina had royally screwed their navigation this morning and his thrice-over check of her math hadn’t been enough to catch her mistake. Besides, another few seconds, and the current would steer for him. “Years have nothing to do with it, but they are what you’re using to judge me, aren’t they? I’ve docked in New Sérène many a time. If I give the order to unfurl the sails, we’ll both have people falling from the spars in a minute and crash ourselves into port. Is that what you want?”

“But how-”

It was then that the water took them, driving them forward as if he’d entered the channel at full sail to begin with. 

With a near lurch into De Sardet, Javier’s panicked look fell to excitement. A smile. “A current? A tide? But this strong…? I’ve never seen…”

He clapped the man on the back, then nodded for Shawna to take the wheel. “Water’s strange around this island; stick with us for a few more voyages and you’ll get used to it.” With a nod and a brush across her shoulder, he caught De Sardet’s attention and motioned down the stairs, still turned towards Javier. “Or I’ll strap you to the bow yet again when you try to kill us all! Entirely up to you!”

Though the man flushed pink, finally he laughed, his usual grave demeanor falling away as the wind whipped through his hair. This island tended to have one of two effects on people. Fortunately, it seemed Javier’s perpetual state of alarm had canceled out the possibility of more crippling anxiety.

From above them came Lauro’s usual shout: “Teer Fradee, ahoy!”

A responding chorus of cheers rose to the sky. 

None of which were his. 

None of which were De Sardet’s. 

Land. A fickle, flawed thing.

He descended to the weather deck, and they settled on the railing across from the main-mast, half in the sun that had dawned through the fog, and half in the mast’s shadow. One foot in the water and one foot on the dock. One hand on the last page of a book, not yet ready to close the cover.

De Sardet clasped her hands together before her and smiled. “This is it, Captain. No more games.”

“You’ll find games enough to play on land. A pretty woman like you will have a lot of trouble to get into.”

“And if I didn’t want trouble?”

He nearly laughed. 

She elbowed him in the side. “Again, I’m trying to be serious, and you’re being an a-”

“Fine, fine, I’ll stop.”

But like before, though she’d been the one to request serious discussion, it seemed her own plans had left her unprepared. “I’m serious about one thing. If I… if I wanted…” A deep breath of sea air gifted back her courage. “If I wanted not to find trouble until I buried myself in a box of tea, would you think me foolish?”

“What kind of ‘trouble’ are we speaking of exactly?”

“The kind we got into inside your cabin.”

She…

_ Why _ would she…

“Very.”

De Sardet frowned, lost in the wake.

“Though I’d hardly be one to talk.” His gaze too fell to the water below. Flowing, moving, always forward. “Us sailors are nothing if not foolish. Not erm… not like I’ve anyone waiting for me in Hikmet, San Matheus, or old Sérène anyhow. A few exes maybe, but not that I would… in case you were curious, that is.”

Despite his fumbled words, a current passed between them, stronger than the one that pulled them towards land.

“But make no promises you can’t keep, De Sardet. Time disperses feeling like wind disperses fog. Don’t sell yourself to a commitment while you’re rolling in the dew.” 

“Something learned from personal experience?”

“About the fog? Of course. You see, I met this woman on a misty isle-”

Her shove nearly bowled him over. 

It would have had he not clutched onto her arm as she’d pulled it away. But he used his grip to draw himself close to her, pressing his nose into her ear. “Go ahead, embarrass me in front of my crew. You’re not the one who has to live with the bastards for the foreseeable future.”

She flashed him a cheeky smile. “You’re right, I’m not.”

That duplicitous- “There’s still time for me to push you overboard. Head over heels, right over the railing. No netting; this would be the perfect spot to do it.” 

But instead of laughing, her smile fell. For a bit, she didn’t speak and then, her voice came out as a murmur that he had to lean closer still to hear. “Afraid I’ve already fallen head over heels, so unless you’d like to chase me down…”

Something jammed itself inside his throat. Something he couldn’t swallow away.

He took her hand and refused to let go until Kurt and Constantin bustled onto deck and swept her away from him. And even then she looked back, some mournful expression on her face before she hid it away like any good legate would. 

Good timing, were there such a thing; he had work to do.

So, work he did, burying his attention in readying the moorings for docking, including un-fucking the head line, a wonderful, necessary thing which held the bow to the dock. A simple thing that Nauts learned about before they’d lost all their child teeth, that a crewman had somehow managed to gnarl in Sérène, then forget about in the months they’d spent at sea. 

And pissy as he was about it, it wasn’t entirely his crew’s fault. He should have double-checked it long ago. As captain, he was responsible for every bit of the ship from the bow to the stern.

So  _ how _ hadn’t he seen this earlier?  _ Why _ hadn’t he seen this earlier? 

Because like a damned teenager, he’d buried his head in thoughts of being buried in someone else?

Stupid, stupid, stupid…

To be fair, he rarely used the head over the quarter gallery, and wear on the lines at sea had made the head line blend in with the rest of the ropes up here. Not that that made it any easier to untangle. 

He’d started some miles offshore and still, now at dock, he fiddled with the cursed thing. Not that that meant he knew how in the hell someone had managed to loop a line about the bowsprit. He couldn’t do it if he’d hung it over the jib and had used it to take his promised swan dive into the sea.

Something he should have done months ago. “What in the deepest trench…? Flavia!”

A sharp gasp. A pattering of footsteps. “Yes, Captain?”

“What piss-poor excuse for a sailor reeled in the bow lines in Sérène?”

No answer.

“I know it wasn’t you. Was it Fina?” Shouldn’t be. The woman was better than that. No… no, it would have to be someone careless, someone easily distracted, someone like… “Santiago?”

Flavia stood, a hand over her mouth, not saying a word. Damn her honor. 

He rearranged his precarious perch on the bowsprit to look her in the eyes. “I’m going to find out sooner or later. It was Santiago, wasn’t it?”

And though she said not a word, she gave a small nod.

“That sand-eating gull brain. Santiago! Where the  _ hell _ are you?”

Captain Tone, based upon Flavia’s wince. Exactly what he’d been going for. 

The entirety of the crew on deck snapped their attention to him, but Santiago wasn’t among them.

“By blessed Polaris, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” And so, despite Flavia’s protests, he scooted himself along the beam past the safety netting and towards where the line was snagged. “Loose it a bit, would you?”

As Flavia slacked the line, he fed it out and over the rest, covering his hands in months’ worth of crust and crud. Not what he’d imagined he’d spend his time in port doing, certainly not with De-

“Captain! Need some help?”

He nearly fell, managing to keep his footing by some favor of the ocean alone. Speak of a kraken, and it would appear. “De Sardet! I’m fine! Really, almost-” A grunt as he yanked the line free of its fellows, sending it sailing back towards Flavia. “-done. Are you leaving?” 

Damnit, she might be. He’d have to get in fast before-

But she didn’t wait for him, teetering her way up the bowsprit instead. “Looks like you need help to me.”

“I said I’m fine!”

She kept coming.

“De Sardet, what in the hell are you doing?”

She ignored his question, stopping to scratch her chin with one arm, then ‘T’ing it back at her side. “Water’s reasonably deep here, right?”

“Here?” It had been a bit since he’d plotted the harbor along with most the course around Teer Fradee, thanks to the Dolphin Cry, a few uneventful voyages, and a heaping of boredom. But across from the warehouse with the green weathervane… “Fifteen feet, I think? Mmm. That sounds right, at least. Green was fifteen, yellow was ten, so the smaller vessels dock down there, and…” Wait a moment. “Why do you ask?”

“That’s good enough.”

‘Good enough’ for…? “Oh, you-”

_ Shit! _

De Sardet broke into a run, coming at him too fast for him to duck her. 

No nets below them, no-

The wench pushed him sideways.

He inhaled deep. Grabbed for her shirt. Plunged into balmy, clear water, surfacing with a gasp. 

A hat drifted past that he made to grab, but another hand pulled for first. 

A beat, and up came the woman herself.

Forfeiting his hat quest, he sent a wall of water in her direction. “You _bitch!_ I can’t believe you-”

“‘Bitch’? Why, I should-”

“Yes, ‘bitch’! What was that for?” 

She gave him an incredulous look, seawater near dripping into her open mouth. “‘I’m going to toss you overboard, De Sardet! Bind your wrists, throw you to the wake, and…’” She dropped her mocked version of his accent adopting a deadpan stare instead, one somehow made more threatening by the hair half-draped over her eyes. “Over and over and over, for  _ months! _ You must have threatened to throw me off your ship a hundred bloody times. All I have to say is... how’s it feel, Captain?”

She’d tackled him off his ship. His own fucking ship.

Into… blissfully warm water, far warmer than it should be this far north. And though he’d washed off with a wet towel onboard hundreds of times, he hadn’t had a proper bath in months. “It feels damned good.”

She too seemed rather pleased, running a hand through the water with a smile. And as she snatched a waterlogged hat and plunked it onto his head, she cracked.

He cracked.

So, there they sat, cackling like morons, clutching onto each other and treading water until someone above them gave an eardrum-shattering whistle.

Lauro, of course, peering over the deck beside Flavia, shaking his head with a knowing smile. “So, Captain… would you say that, for once, she’s the one who got you soaking w-”

“Finish that statement, lookout, and when I get back ashore, I will knee you in the balls so hard that your ancestors will feel it.”

Though he fought off laughter, with a locking motion over his lips, Lauro turned back towards the deck.

Flavia, on the other hand… “Are you two all right? You want that I should drop a line over? Can’t say I saw what happened; did you get tangled in the rope?”

De Sardet flashed him a cheeky smile. “We’re fine, thank you! The Captain’s still got his sea legs; his footing’s a little-”

“This lying shit pushed me overboard. But we’ll be fine, thank you, Flavia. I’m going to drown her and donate her corpse to the seas, and then I’ll head for the ramp at the far side and meet you at dock.”

Even Flavia- sweet, concerned Flavia- bit her lip, her snickering stuttering her words. “As- uh, as you were then, Captain! Don’t let the sirens get you!”

Too fucking late for that.

Still, De Sardet grinned at him from under a drenched brim, the usual feather on her hat either glued back by the seawater or lost in the chaos. Her clothes slicked to her skin. Water dripped down her face. And never had she been more beautiful. “So… you’re welcome to drown me, but not with seawater. I think I can hold my breath in long enough spurts to make it worth your while.”

She had to take things in that direction, hadn’t she? 

Why would he expect any different from her? “I should have lost you in the strait. Said some sudden gale knocked you over, and though we heroically fought back through the narrow corridor, beating to windward the entire way, by the time we reached where you’d been lost, naught remained.”

“Then, you netted the siren that had eaten me, dragged her onto the ship, and fucked her for revenge.”

“Thought you’d have noticed I alternate by now. Men can be sirens too, you sexist.”

She didn’t laugh, catching some drift of gloom that hid beneath the surface. Put a hand to his cheek, her thumb running under his eye and coming back with a line of black upon it. “I’m glad you didn’t throw me over. Glad I got to know you.”

“So am I.”

Without a glance above, without a care as to who might be watching, she pulled him in by the collar, pressing her lips to his. Parted his lips with her tongue as he dug his fingers into her sopping hair. He held her to his mouth with one hand and to his chest with the other as if, did he clutch her close enough, she wouldn’t have to go. 

As she pulled back, she took his upper lip between hers, then his lower one, and planted a kiss upon his forehead. Her ritual every morning at dawn before she left, every time before they parted. A kiss that this time, wouldn’t need to last him the day but either fifteen months or fifteen years.

…Who was he kidding? 

He wouldn’t see her again. 

But this moment here, thrown into the ocean with her, was perfect. And although thoughts of it on every voyage to follow would grab his heart and tear another fissure in it, he wouldn’t take it back for anything in the world. 

That kiss… could have been their last.

Some violent storm rose within him, threatening to drown him from the inside.

_ No. _

No, he couldn’t-

Didn’t want it to be-

What if he offered his shore leave? A… shore leave he never got to take in Teer Fradee, that she wouldn’t be able to take advantage of with that damned cousin of hers- 

What if- what if he offered that stupid crate, right here and now? If he were a selfish bastard, and he asked, would she come with him? Would she toss aside her family ties, raise anchor, and-

A distant shout: “Cousin?” 

He dropped his hand from her hair, his heart too falling into the water.

“Dear cousin, where’d you go? There’re doctors here that owe you some bile! If I must drink this awful swill, so must you!”

She didn’t answer. Sniffed. Brought a wet hand up to wipe her wet nose.

“I believe, my Lady, that’s your cue.”

The breath that left her nearly sounded like a sigh. “I… suppose it is.”

They couldn’t part like this. Not with this note of mourning in the air between them. 

So, as he started towards the ramp, he dunked her under the water on his way past, then hauled his ass towards land as fast he could possibly swim. Fortunately for him, his fastest was faster than De Sardet’s. But not by much. 

She waded onto shore behind him, a-

The  _ hell? _

A slap of her waterlogged hat stinging his ass.

He whirled about. “ _ Excuse _ you? You did  _ not _ -”

“Captain Vasco! Good to see you can beat a land dweller in a race, if barely.”

_ Oh. _

Oh, no.

Was that…?

Sure enough, behind him stood Admiral Cabral, a smirk upon her face. “Did your land legs cause you to fall in from dock?”

“No! No, ma’am, I- I just… I was erm… adjusting some-”

With a clear of her throat, De Sardet strode past him. “It was my fault, ma’am. I was up on the bowsprit and I lost my footing; Captain Vasco jumped in after me. He didn’t know I knew how to swim.”

Not that poker hadn’t proved it already, but De Sardet was a fantastic liar. Whether it was enough to fool the Admiral remained to be seen, though it took a liar to know one. 

Admiral Cabral was anything but a liar. “Then, fortunate he was there, indeed.” If she had any suspicions, the admiral didn’t comment upon them instead raising a brow with her arm. “Admiral Cabral, ranking officer for Tír Fradí. If you have any questions, you can direct them through me. But you are…?”

“Lady De Sardet, a legate of the Congregation of Merchants, here to help my cousin with the governance transfer. Lovely to meet you, Admiral.”

Admiral Cabral gave a brief shake of De Sardet’s extended hand, then turned to him, still wearing that bemused smile. “First some crewman of yours -Santa-something- bolts off your ship, spouting about you cutting through the Falaise Strait like a knife through butter, and now, you tell me you’ve managed to find a polite legate? Don’t know what kind of witchcraft you dabble in, but will you teach it to the rest of the captains?”

Santiago hadn’t answered him because he’d been busy singing his praises and running ashore. Well…

Better than him hiding below deck like a coward as he’d imagined. “I could, if ever you’d give me a week off.”

Preferably now. No week’s worth of errands. Now _ , right now _ , when he could steal De Sardet away from her cousin-

But a wave of her hand, and Admiral Cabral dismissed the notion. “With the way things are going lately, if I give you time off, I’ll have nothing good at all to put on my progress report to the Admiralty.”

Really? Strange. “That bad?”

“That bad.” At a wave from the distance accompanied by a whistle, the admiral turned. She shook her head, then started out towards her beckoner, pivoting back towards him and De Sardet as she went. “Which reminds me, Vasco: I’m switching out your next assignment. Sticking a green captain with your crew on the Sea Horse, and you’re headed out with the Silver Stallion. Sorry for the last-minute swap! Like I said, things have been a bit hairy.”

Switching out?

But-

What the-

Wait a moment. “ _ The _ Silver Stallion? Captain Ruben’s old ship? Is he still-”

“Still on it! I want all hands on deck for this voyage, so you’ll be acting captain, he’ll be acting quartermaster. Switch your things from the Sea Horse, then come see me before you leave port.” Another call from behind her made the admiral roll her eyes. “Helpless, this lot. Couldn’t button their coats without guidance.” 

“Then maybe you should stop babying them, and ride them like you ride me.” Half a swear, whispered under his breath so she wouldn’t hear.

Admiral Cabral caught it anyhow. “If I didn’t ride you, you’d be just as bad as the rest!”

‘Land Mom’ at her finest.

But after her called mockery, she disappeared, leaving him to deal with the chaos she’d sewn in her wake.

A ship switch. Losing his crew. But sailing again with his old mentor… if Admiral Cabral had to whack him about the head with the transfer bat, at least he’d be transferring to a ship somewhat familiar. 

But why? What kind of mission needed the expertise of two captains? 

More importantly, how hadn’t Captain Ruben made admiral yet? The man was Sea-Born, had spent over fifty years with the Nauts, was a hell of a sailor… was that not enough? If De Sardet hadn’t been bullshitting him and he himself was nearly up for promotion, Ruben should’ve been there years ago. There was  _ no _ way a position hadn’t been vacated in the seven years since he’d seen Ruben. Admiral Vesily alone was old enough to forget where he’d left his own two hands, and-

“No more loop around the continent? You going to be longer?”

The ‘polite legate’ had a question. What a wonder. “You know, I haven’t seen such fine ass-kissing in years. You  _ are _ a good diplomat; no wonder the Prince wanted to send you.”

“Yes, well, my father always said to ‘be the change you want to see in the world.’ Personally, I think that more legates should kiss asses rather than be them.” An impatient tap of her foot, and her guileful guise vanished. “You didn’t answer my question.”

He gave a shake of his head, both to affirm the negative and condemn her petulance. “Quicker, if I don’t have to run the usual shit show of errands for the admiral in port.” Something he’d been doing since he’d met Admiral Cabral on the continent some… fifteen years ago. “But I’m not certain; I’ll have to ask.”

“How long is ‘less long’?”

“Shave off a few weeks perhaps, assuming she also has nothing for me to do in Hikmet and San Matheus.” Each home to a head of port, one spry and subservient, one older than dirt, both that reported directly to Admiral Cabral. “Always something to do in Sérène; as you know, Admiral Contra can barely keep his head on straight.”

De Sardet bounced upon on her toes at the news, clapping her hands, a shit-eating grin on her face the whole while. What a spastic, enthusiastic woman. One who…

Who wore his…

Hat.

Then, what did he have on? Had he…?

Oh, no. 

He whipped the hat from his head, a horrid, midnight-blue thing that sure enough belonged to De Sardet. That conniving  _ witch _ , De Sardet. “You let me have an entire conversation with the admiral with this feathery bullshit on?”

“It’s one feather!”

“That’s one too many!”

She huffed like some irritated child. “Always a critic.”

“Then stop giving me things to criticize. And give me my damned hat back!”

A simper creeping up her cheeks, she ran her hand over its brim. “You know… I may decline. I think I like this one better.”

“My three-year-old tricorne? Are you daft? If there’s a pinhole-sized spot on that thing that my sweat hasn’t permeated, I’ll eat a helping of pufferfish liver. It’s old and disgusting and probably ruining your preened, perfect hair.”

Bad, bad idea to provoke her.

She sauntered over to him, placing her hand upon his shoulder and leaning in so close that one would have to be a fool not to take them for more than mere shipmates. “Do you know what else your sweat has been all over?”

Places.

Many exquisite places.

He traced his fingers across the brim of his hat, along the same path she had. ”Fine. Keep it, you dirty wench.” Shaking her hat dry so the feather stuck up once more, he plunked it back on his head and crossed his arms about his chest, no longer Vasco the Naut but Vasco the pompous explorer asshat. “Considering I could sell this hat for five of mine, you’re getting the short end of the stick.”

“I haven’t gotten the short end of the stick for months, Captain.”

This damned woman. Wasn’t enough for her to knock him off his ship, was it? She had to try to make him flush purple. 

Although… “We’re ashore now, Lady De Sardet. Feel free to use my name, rather than continue to keep me as one of the nameless, faceless rank and file.”

“And yet, I’m still ‘Lady De Sardet’ to you.” 

Shit.

He hadn’t thought that through. Hadn’t thought any of this through, because when she looked his way, he lost the ability to so much as think.

For months he’d held his tongue in the name of politeness. Of discretion. 

What a shit notion.

He dropped his gaze to his feet, his voice following to the dirt beneath them. “Erm… I may not… know your… first… name.”

“You  _ what?” _

“It wasn’t on the manifest! And Kurt and Constantin never use it; to them you’re ‘dear cousin’ or ‘Green Blood’, whatever in the hell that means!”

Stars damn this. 

She’d rebuke him. Slap him and run away and…

De Sardet hadn’t moved.

Slowly, he lifted his gaze.

She didn’t glare. Didn’t tap a patter with her fingers or put on a sneer, but instead held a warmth within her eyes and a bemused smile upon her face. “You could have asked, you know. I would have teased you, but I would have answered.”

What kind of man did she think he was? Some- some _vagabond_ who would-

He dipped in closer, dropping his voice to a hiss. “After we slept together? Even I’m not that tactless. ‘Thank you, miss, for riding my cock so fervently, and by the way, what did you say your name was?’” With a huff, he pulled away. “Canopus on a crab cake, we’ve gone about this completely backasswards.”

“We’ve back what?”

She’d never heard…?

“‘Backasswards’. As in… we’ve secured the moorings, then raised anchor? Pulled the ramp before loading cargo?” 

Still that doe-eyed look.

Too maritime, maybe. “Bought the house before getting married? Swallowed the shot of tequila, then licked the salt? Cummed first, then remembered the oils?”

No…? 

_ How…?  _ “Fucking hell! If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear you’d never been outside an estate at all.” 

A moment passed of her wide-eyed stare in which she left him to wonder if he’d finally said too much. 

But then she crumbled, sputtering into laughter and dragging him with her again until she listed into his shoulder. Until he half-collapsed into his own damned hat. And though people had long since started to stare, he found himself nearly out of shits to give. 

After they’d both gone pink and had run out of breath, she somehow managed to pull back enough to offer him a hand.

“I- I haven’t fallen yet, De Sardet.”

A lie. He’d fallen long ago and sank deeper every day.

She pointedly stared to her outstretched fingers, then back to him.

“What?”

With a roll of her eyes, she dragged his hand from his side, giving it the same congenial pump she had months ago. “Good to meet you, Vasco. Marina De Sardet, at your service.”

Obviously some mockery of him, though of what, he…

He…

Wait.

_ Marina? _

Mar- “You’re shitting me.”

“Not shitting you at all. Look inside my hat.”

Some pun she’d made up to-

Sure enough, scrawled across the inside of the brim was ‘Marina De Sardet,’ marked in turquoise embroidery. 

He ran his thumb over the length of it, that storm inside him kicking up the waters within once more.

“And before you start with the puns, I’ve heard them all. ‘Salty today, Marina?’ ‘No wonder you swear like a sailor.’” She bent into him, hiding their heads behind his tricorne as if they were about to share some torrid secret. “‘You dirty girl, you’re wetter than your namesake.’ And I fucking hate them all, so don’t you dare start.”

She had a name.

“Marina.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“You’re telling me that this whole time… the feared ‘Marina’ has been the scourge of cigar boxes and liquor cabinets everywhere. ‘Marina’, the lover of men and women alike.” He took a step in, pulling his hat closer still, yanking her into him with a hand behind her waist. “‘Marina’, the noble with a tattoo and nipple rings.” 

And though he didn’t mean to, he laughed, his nose falling into her cheek.

Marina. 

Marina, Marina, Marina. 

A name he could never forget. One that could have been a Naut‘s. 

The refined noblewoman had been the guise all along. Down to her moniker, she was ever the siren who would as soon pull him into the water for a tender kiss as wreck him upon its shores. 

And she had.

She mistook his giddiness for a jibe and pulled away, dropping his hat with her hand. Pouting. “You hate it.”

“I love it. It suits you.”

Her breath came out in a shocked little waver. Though the sun shone high above them, still, she easily eclipsed it with her smile.

“Captain!” Another voice behind him, from someone else he’d have to part with as well. “Admiral Cabral said something about you and the Silver Stallion; that was a bad joke, wasn’t it?”

“Just a minute, Shawna! I’ll come say goodbye before I go.”

‘Goodbye.’

When he turned back to her, to…  _ Marina _ , she fiddled with his hat, fingers sliding upon its curves. “Well. I, um… suppose this is farewell for now.”

‘For now.’ That made it seem a little better. 

“I… suppose so.” But what could he say? Besides the obvious words that he wouldn’t dare, words he may not mean, what else was there to say? ‘Farewell and thanks for the sex?’ ‘I really like you, despite your shit upbringing?’ ‘Think about me when you inevitably fuck someone else?’ “Erm…”

Perhaps nothing at all.

He turned.

She caught his hand, pressing something cool and hard into it. 

A shell. Not one from the ocean. Forty-five caliber, a standard pistol round. 

“You’re gifting me a… bullet?”

“The last one I had from Sérène, from when I fought your hold beast.”

“You mean, from when you shot the poor thing- and probably half the ships around- full of holes, before I could drag your cousin out of its reach and bring my crew down to take care of it the right way?”

Her glare only proved him right.

“If this is the last…” She’d had some thirty shells on her belt when first he’d seen her. “How many damned bullets did you go through?”

Her turn to flush red. “You… don’t want to know.”

Apparently not.

And after a moment’s hesitation, slowly, still turned to face him, she started away. “But you know what, Captain Vasco? That’s one more native monster than you’ve downed, isn’t it? Maybe that bullet’ll help you fight one, one day. You’ll be tired, wounded, your sword arm trembling, and then -bam!” She fired an imaginary pistol into the air. “I’ll have saved you. And you’ll say, ‘Marina, you brilliant woman, I am terribly, horribly sorry for not asking your name and for making fun of you.’”

“I’d sooner die.”

Her jaw dropped as the look of outrage she should have held minutes ago finally found her. “Vasco, I hate you.”

“My dear, salty Marina… I hate you too.”

Another shout from behind him: “Captain! Tell me it’s all crap so I can go back to having a good day!”

Lauro, this time. Maelstrom drag them to the depths; couldn’t they wait a moment?

But… the sun wasn’t getting any higher in the sky. He’d had more than enough of a goodbye. 

Still, his chest clenched as he started backwards, stowing her bullet inside his breast pocket. “It seems I’m needed elsewhere. ‘May the ground be ever too solid beneath your feet’ or whatever the natives here say. Sounds like a curse to me.”

Marina stopped dead. Saluted as if he were some lauded hero, not a mere sailor. “Smooth sailing, Captain! And um… whenever you end up back in port, don’t forget about that tea crate.”

He forced a smile. How could he forget? Her hat smelled like lilacs. Like her. “Lady De Sardet, I wouldn’t dare.”

“You’d better not! I’ll be waiting! Steeping!”

Even as they parted, she’d managed to make him laugh.

And, his heart thudding, a knot around his gut anchoring him to the trenches, he turned and walked away. He turned and walked away because, weak man that he was, he couldn’t bear to watch her go. 


	13. Black Water

First Marina, then his crew. 

The admiral either wanted to harden his heart to stone or to rip it from his body and leave him bleeding out upon the floor. Either would be reason enough for him to question his orders. 

Fortunately for the Nauts, he was a good soldier. The admiralty pointed, and he followed, damn him, he followed. Though here and now, with his crew thronged about him like he’d somehow chummed the dirt itself, he was hardly able to go anywhere.

“What if they hate me for hanging my dream catchers? My last captain called me a ‘demon worshipper’, I… I don’t know if I can take that again.”

“They’ll never drink the Liquor of the Week. They may not let _ me _drink the Liquor of the Week.”

“What if the new captain makes me cart buckets from their cabin too? The Strait was already so many buckets…”

“Permission to hug you before you go, Captain? Just in case you wreck on something or we wreck on something-”

“Flavia, you shit, don’t jinx him! We want him to come back in one piece, not several!”

“Nobody believes in jinxes here, Lauro! We’re not seas-damned twelve-year-olds!”

“Captain, I…”

“Captain!”

“…right, Captain?”

He sighed and opened his arms. “Pull it in, all of you.”

And he was swamped by a sea of bodies that flatteringly gave a few sniffles.

“This’s a temporary thing, right? We’ll see you again?”

Hopefully. “I don’t know.”

“Why would she-”

“I _ don’t _ know.”

“I’m going to freakin’ kill Cabral.”

“_Admiral _Cabral, Lauro.” He gave his lookout a pat on the back, reaching around Flavia and surprisingly, Gustavo to do it. “And you’re going to have to get in line.”

Flavia pulled a knitting needle from her pocket.

Fina tugged a stiletto from her braid. 

Salem held up a bottle of amber liquid. “When and where?”

“By the tide, behind _ me! _ I meant… it’s a fucking figure of speech!”

Fina produced a sharpener from her belt and gave her stiletto a good rub down. 

Hell, these idiots would get themselves killed! “Will you stop that? Put it away, all of you!”

“But if we all ambush her, she cannot-”

“_Now!” _

Not without a few grumbles, they complied.

“After I get my things from the Sea Horse, I’ll talk to her and leave the lot of you a note, all right? You’re on shore leave; you should be in town celebrating and drinking people out of house and home, not moping over a captain change. They happen all the time.”

Still, Fina frowned. “But if we stay here and do not let you get your things, then you cannot leave us.”

Damn them. Of course, they had to tug at him like this. “No… that only means I’ll be cursing you all when I’ve set sail and I have to wear someone else’s pants because I don’t have mine.”

True to form, Lauro gave a catlike grin. “Or… if we went into town and kidnapped your Lady friend, I’d bet you’d come back aboard. Then, we’ll pull in the moorings and _ bam! _ Problem solved. You’d be in someone else’s pants in a good way.”

A clear of his throat failed to push down the heat in his cheeks. “Right, so your big plan to keep me aboard involves kidnapping, extortion, and piracy? Are you sure you’re in the right profession, lookout?”

“With all due respect: up yours, Captain.”

The laugh that left his lips almost sounded genuine. “I was going to say, ‘meet me in my cabin after dark,’ but it’s hardly mine anymore.”

A somber silence settled over the scene. 

That wouldn’t do. “Well, Lookout Laurrrrro, please write me from jail with the few fingers you’ll have left, and let me know how that brilliant plot works out for you.” 

Though snickers rose from the crowd, no one moved.

“In all seriousness, I need you lot to back up. You may have a few days, but I haven’t the foggiest when I’m supposed to be raising anchor, and if I get left behind-”

His crew collectively took a step forward.

Thankfully, paranoid man that he was, Gustavo always carried a pistol. And hardly anyone except him carried ear plugs.

He smuggled them into his ears, snatched the gun from the man’s belt, grabbed two rounds and made to cock the- why the _ fuck _ was it already cocked and loaded? “Who wants to be able to hear tonight? Anyone?”

His crew collectively took a step backward. Not without grumbling, they parted a path to the gangway.

“_Thank you. _” He uncocked the pistol, unplugged his ears, shuffled the bullets from the chamber, and put those in his quartermaster’s pocket as he holstered the gun itself. “Gustavo, do try not to shoot your foot off, won’t you? If I meet you in port and find you’ve requisitioned a peg leg, I’ll rip it off and beat you with it.” 

The man gave an uncharacteristic smile. “Arr, Captain, I’ll be tryin’ me best not to turn more pirate than ye while ye be gone.”

He made a gesture that suggested his quartermaster stow his parts somewhere they wouldn’t be able to go. And, one last chorus of laughter surrounding him, he started up the gangway. Reached the weather deck. Made his way up the stairs to the quarterdeck, his hand running along the banister the entire time. 

The Silver Stallion didn’t have rails like this, at least not the last time he’d been on her. Her rails weren’t freshly lacquered and polished to a shine; they were worn and weathered, as likely to splinter your hands to shit as to stop your fall into the depths. 

“As long as they work,” Ruben had always said.

…As long as they worked.

He pushed open the door to the hall, walked to his room, and shut the door behind him. Leaned against it, all his breath leaving him. 

Home. His home for the last few years. 

But he’d be back.

…Wouldn’t he?

He’d have to be. The admiral wouldn’t waste two captains on one ship forever. Though… sometimes Admiral Cabral’s motivations seemed a mystery. 

_ ‘Get me two skinks and some dirt, little Vasco.’ _

_ ‘First Mate! I need you to supervise the Mermaid’s unloading today.’ _

_ ‘There’s a Theleme cardinal in port; find him and whoop his ass in poker, Captain.’ _

Always a laundry list of tasks for him: some fetch quests, some seemingly political. And this morning, she’d teased him for falling in, had damn-near sung his praises, then had booted him off his ship.

What the hell was going on anymore? _ Why _would she send him-

Too much to think about when he still had to pack. 

But where to start? 

Should he bring his charts? He could trust another captain with them, couldn’t he? He could trust the Nauts implicitly; it was the outsiders that he had to worry about. 

Still, maybe best to pass the charts off to Admiral Cabral for safekeeping. Not that another captain would sell them to the highest bidder, but someone spilling something on them by accident wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Not like he could keep the drawer locked once he handed the ship over; the new captain would need access to the log. Besides, his mucking about around Teer Fradee was a personal pet project; perhaps it should be kept that way. Someone else might screw it up. 

Like they would this cabin. 

_ His _ cabin. 

No! ‘His’ no longer. Although…

Joke was on them with how much he’d broken in that mattress in the last few months alone. 

He cracked a smile. Best to do this while still could smile about it. 

So, he stowed away his things, tossing his clothes from the wardrobe into his trunk along with his rolled-up charts, his pistol, some paper, and his half-working fountain pen. Secured his cutlass to his belt. Stuffed his coin purse in his pockets. The captain’s log stayed with the ship, the furniture was bolted to the floor, and the books he didn’t have room for, so those would have to be entrusted to someone else. 

Some weight settled into his stomach.

Ridiculous. He should hold no feelings for inanimate, meaningless objects. 

Like the desk he’d sat at many a night, pouring over maps and journals instead of sleeping, because while sleeping, one couldn’t learn a thing. The wardrobe he’d refused to use for his first year aboard because it had seemed too grand to be real and using nice things would have made him have something in common with nobility. The bed he’d always thought was too soft until De Sardet had come along and had to stretch every morning to right her back. A bed they’d fucked in, many a time.

Not just the bed. The walls. The floor. The door, one night when they’d both been feeling a little tipsy and very daring.

Had it been mere fucking? ‘Making love’ was such a contrite term, but especially when she’d started staying over more often, that seemed far closer to what they’d done. 

…To him, anyhow. To him, and him alone.

Time would tell if it had meant the same to her. 

And right now, time wasn’t something he had much of. So, he popped up the handle on his trunk and wheeled it out, the door clicking shut behind him.

It was only a room. Only a ship. No need to have an attachment to such material things. And yet…

He made his way down the gangway once more, only one soul waiting for him this time. “Flavia? What are you doing here?”

“Captain! I, uhm… I…”

Though he parked his trunk across from her, standing there for a solid minute in silence, still she couldn’t find the words.

“I- I’m sorry, Captain. I know you’ve got to go, and-”

“I can spare a bit. Talk to me.”

She bit her trembling lip, her gaze anywhere but him. “I… know I don’t talk much ‘bout the ship I was on before this one, haven’t had much reason to, but… the captain wasn’t nice. Wasn’t like you. Would have never let me take the helm, let alone in a canyon. Was always yelling at us, real yelling, but you…” Flavia looked up, her eyes watering. “You’re tough, but fair. You treat us like people, and that, I…” With a sniffled gasp, she threw her arms around him, resting her head on his shoulder. “Thank you.”

A hug. 

She cared enough to give him a hug.

He let his trunk go and wrapped his arms around her too, that gnarl in his chest twisting once more.

“Not every captain is like you, so you come back, ok? You come back, and you come back as you. Ruben’s got a real reputation.”

“_ Captain _ Ruben, Flavia. He’s like me: rough but fair. And I’ve sailed with him before; I practically grew up under the man. I’ll be fine.”

She pulled back, wiping her nose clean. “You’d better be. And I’ll call him ‘Captain’ when he deserves it. From what some of my friends have said, it doesn’t sound like he does.” 

He’d met Flavia’s ‘friends’ a few ports back. Nothing like the woman herself: lazy, entitled, and incompetent. The sort of people that forever railed against rougher captains, because they were the sort that never got anything done.

Except… ‘when he deserves it.’ 

Flavia thought Ruben didn’t, when Ruben had been a captain for near as long as he himself had been alive. Yet, after her first month upon the Sea Horse, he’d never heard his own name without a title. 

Funny, the ways that some sailors thought. 

“I suppose you’re entitled to your own opinion, Flavia. Not like I’ve the time to argue.”

“Nope!” She managed a smile, clapped him on the shoulder, and started towards town. “Nor have I! I’ve got to meet Lauro before he drinks the Coin Tavern out of ale, and Josefina, Jonas, and I have to drag him from the alleyway again.”

‘Coin Tavern’? On the last shore leave they’d have before most of their initiation days?

Sirius blind him; not on his watch. “Flavia, wait!”

She skidded to a halt. Turned, about a stone’s throw from him. “Yes, Captain?”

He fished his coin purse from his coat and tossed it overhand to her. 

Flavia snatched it from the air, shaking her hand about afterwards. “The hell’s in this, bullets? You think we’re going to need to off people? Coin Tavern’s not _ that _ bad.”

“It is, so fuck them. Take that and take the crew somewhere nice, all right? Go bother some nobility. Order some drinks with more than one ingredient.”

Some realization dawning on her face, she opened the drawstrings. The woman staggered then nearly fell over, her eyes going huge as her hand flew to her mouth. “You- you- _ shit! _ I- I can’t take this!” Dangling the bag before her as if contact would burn her, she ran back towards him. “Captain, I _ can’t _-”

“_Flavia! _ Do you want to be the one assigned to polish Gustavo’s soon-to-be peg leg? And before you answer that, you should know that the man’s part werewolf, and in all our years together, I’ve never seen him shave a thing, save his face.”

She stopped dead. A burst of hesitant laughter left her lips. “N-no, sir.”

“Then you get your ass into town, you find your crew mates, and you live a little before the tide takes you all back out to sea.”

“I- uhm… ok.” A grin dawned across her face as she bounced upon her toes. Just like De Sardet had. Just like… “Ok! Th-thank you! I’ll tell them it’s from you!”

He’d never hear the end of it, if ever he heard from his crew again. 

_ When _ever. No ‘if’s. 

He hadn’t the strength for ‘if’s. “I’d rather you tell them you robbed some noble.”

A snort of laughter as she paced backwards. “They’d never believe me!”

Mmm… that, they wouldn’t. Not from Flavia. Fina, maybe. Santiago, definitely. “Take care of the ship! If I come back, and there’re no more Melvins-”

“I’ll be sure Melvin the Eighteenth has fresh water!”

She’d better. “And if Santiago screws the bow line again, you keelhaul him, you hear?”

Flavia disappeared into the night, her white shirt and a shout all that remained of her. “I’ll be sure to keelhaul Santiago!”

She fucking wouldn’t. But the outlandish image had made him grin. 

And now… now he was truly alone. No one waited for him on deck just outside a double door. No one lingered in his room to greet him with a smile and a kiss. He’d bade goodbye to a woman he’d grown to l… like and a crew he’d known for years, and in return, nothing.

Well.

Not nothing. A whole new ship. A hopefully familiar crew, but a different one than the people he’d gotten used to. Hell, ‘used to’ wasn’t strong enough; he would die for every single one for the bastards, and if the display at dock was any indication, they’d do the same for him.

And Admiral Cabral had ripped them away.

He started for the harbor office. He shouldn’t ask. Shouldn’t question, shouldn’t even _ think _ about it. Should take the order and execute it like a good Naut would. 

But did she think that he was a good Naut? Was he there to supervise Captain Ruben’s crew, or vice-versa? 

Perhaps he’d screw up. Perhaps they were to take some new route that he wouldn’t have a single clue as to how to navigate, and he’d wreck them upon the shores, and-

“Captain Vasco.”

He jumped.

Admiral Cabral barely gave him a second glance from the desk outside the office, her right hand buried under a mess of papers. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. What’s wrong?”

Nothing. 

Everything. 

“I’m fine. Only here to turn in some charts before switching my things over to the Stallion.” True to his word, he opened the fasteners of his trunk and bequeathed his prize born of late nights and scribbles and toying with the Dolphin Cry before he’d known how it worked. Hell, he still had no idea how it worked. “I’ve had them on the Sea Horse for safe-keeping, but seeing as the Sea Horse is no longer mine…”

The admiral took them, giving them a brief once over but not unrolling them, her expression blank the entire time. All business tonight. “Very well. Anything else?”

She’d ignored his comment along with his charts. Of course, she had. Admiral Cabral wasn’t stupid; if he wanted something from her, he’d have to ask. 

But what could he say, save, ‘Respectfully, the fuck?’ “Assuming the Silver Stallion is-”

“Already loaded and waiting. Told the crew you’d be leaving port tonight with the ebb tide.”

Zero shore leave then, as usual. Not that he’d should expected any, but running back to Marina with some spiel about how he had a week ashore had sounded so…

Foolish. “The usual loop? Hikmet to San Matheus to the Continent and back?”

Stalling.

And she knew it.

She gave a nod, her gaze not leaving the papers before her. “The usual. So, that’s the extent of your debrief, and you should leave before the tide flips and the current starts back in again.”

She wanted him gone.

Right.

Mission above all else, and they couldn’t be late. Being late into port was unprofessional and meant angry patrons. In time, angry patrons grew angry enough to look for loopholes in their contracts like the Prince d’Orsay had done. A dig that had ended in the Prince and his sister each keeping a child that should have belonged to the Nauts. 

If less captains had been late, poor petulant Constantin could have been a cabin boy. And… he might have been setting sail with Marina instead of leaving her behind. “Well… I’ll be off then. I’ll see you in a year and some. Take care, Admiral.”

Admiral Cabral said nothing. Still reading that same page.

He turned to leave.

A hand closed around his wrist, a shower of papers flying around it. Five meticulously tattooed fingers, each for a seaman the woman had trained to captain, a woman whose mask of indifference had cracked into some façade of concern. “Captain Vasco…” But as some young, mousy-haired girl peeked her head out of the office behind them, her mask slid up once more. “Be careful.”

“I always am.”

She dropped his arm, and he headed away, no more enlightened than when he’d arrived.

Pirates about, maybe? That would warrant caution and another pair of eyes, someone who’d sailed the passage a few times more. But again, why wasn’t Captain Ruben enough? All the man did was run trade routes. Some absolute shit turn of weather expected to come in? Something wrong with Ruben’s crew?

Pollux light his path; all he had were questions and a lack of time in which to find the answers. And if he had no answers, he could give his crew- his _ former _ crew- none. So, he strapped a meager note to a rock, chucked it onto the deck of the Sea Horse, and made for the end of the dock towards the larger slips.

Towards the Silver Stallion.

Would Ruben be angry with him? Feel he’d been sent to supervise? Obviously, that wasn’t why Admiral Cabral had assigned him to captain, more so that Captain Ruben had more experience on a ship, and quartermaster was a more crucial position. A first mate could step in for a bad captain, but a bad quartermaster…? The voyage would be screwed from the start.

Ruben wouldn’t be mad. Wouldn’t curse at him the moment he saw him.

Right?

He stopped, his boots at the edge of the gangway, teetering between shore and sea. Maybe if he asked the Admiral for-

No!

What was wrong with him? He never hesitated before stepping aboard. Returning to sea was like welcoming an old friend back into town, not walking over a graveyard at midnight. And yet, for some reason, having his toes touch that wood sent a shiver down his spine.

At the very top of it, leaning against the ship’s railing, the hair that escaped his bandanna blowing in the wind… “Dunno who she’s sending over, or why Cabral thinks we need someone else with us. Been doing fine so far.”

A hulking man shrugged. “Paranoid, maybe? I’ve heard the pirates come down from the north this time of year. _ Ice _ pirates. People with short, sturdy boats with keels that could cut a man in half. I’ve heard they can ram a ship and take no damage at all.”

“Ademar, you shit; you know that’s an old wives’ tale. Why do you believe that superstitious garbage? And where the fuck is this new-” Captain Ruben turned, his jaw falling. And then… then, his face lit up in a smile as he started down the gangway. “_ Vasco? _ The absolute frigid _ hell _ are you doing here? Haven’t seen you in years, I…”

Admiral Cabral hadn’t told his mentor who she would be sending. Of course, she hadn’t. Of fucking-

An admiral was supposed to take care of their captains, to do his or her best at making them feel safe and comfortable, in port and otherwise. How was failing to properly debrief either of them on this voyage accomplishing any of that?

Nothing to do but make the best of it. “Captain Ruben! Seven whole years since last I saw you, does my memory serve me right.”

Ruben donned some uncharacteristically enthusiastic smile.

“And it wasn’t long enough, you grizzled, grumpy shit.”

A weighty pause fell between them. 

At least until Ruben buried him in a bear hug, half-trying to squeeze the life from him. “And here, I thought this day had gone belly up.” The man pulled back, holding him at arm’s length like some prized doll. “What have you been up to?”

“Me? The hell have _you_ been up to? I docked in port, and no sooner had I stepped off my ship than Admiral Cabral comes up to me, kicks me off my own vessel, and tells me I’m sailing with your sorry ass instead. So, what did you do? You gunning for pirates at every corner? Did someone on board get afflicted with some ancient curse that needs a blessing? Because I am as far from a religious man as one could possibly be.”

With a rasped chuckle and a sigh, Ruben shook his head. “I wish I knew. Cabral wouldn’t tell me anything, save that we were getting a new captain for the next leg, and I was quarter-ing instead.” His former captain closed in, dipping his mouth towards his ear. “Doubt even she knows what the hell _ she’s _ doing though, so I’m not surprised. Daft bitch has lost a lot to time.”

“Ruben!”

“What? Am I wrong?” 

After what he’d seen here today… not exactly. A shame. Admiral Cabral had always been the most judicious of the admirals he’d known. Perhaps the stress of the job was getting to her. Perhaps she’d been off the sea too long.

He ran a hand over his mouth, still peeking towards the harbor office as if the admiral herself would come charging at him any second, screeching that she could hear his thoughts and that he brought shame to the Nauts. “Lacking tact as always, Captain Ruben, but… never wrong.”

“See? Knew I taught you well.” A grin and a nod of his head back towards the ship, and the man started up the planking. “Come aboard! I’ll show you the ropes, and you can get settled in. We’ve been in port for a week now; we’re about rearing to go.”

A _ week? _

He gritted his teeth to keep the hateful words from spilling out. 

_ They’d _ gotten shore leave. _ They’d _ gotten to relax and drink and socialize, and he’d had to pack up straight away, rush off for seas only knew what reason, and-

He reached the deck of the ship. Hoisted his trunk over to… literal zero familiar faces, save Ruben’s. 

Had Cabral swapped out all the old crew on him too? If all she did was swap personnel, she could hardly complain of ‘captains getting nothing done’.

“Vasco, this is First Mate Ademar. Ademar, Captain Vasco.”

He extended his hand. “Pleasure.”

A man who could snap him in half with a look took it, swallowing his hand with his own and giving him a small smile. “Pleasure’s mine, Captain.”

“Second Officer Bella.”

A lean, dark-haired woman with eyes like his own waved from near the helm.

“And Third Officer Tomas.”

A weaselly, blond man nodded from the spot he relaxed against the rails.

All Sea-Born, save the second officer.

“The crew, I’ll introduce to you later. With all the change over, even I don’t know half their names. But let’s get you settled in, all right? First things first.” A clap upon on his back, and Ruben started off towards the back of the quarterdeck, towards the captain’s cabin. “Looks like you could use a bit of rest; I can guide us out of-”

“No.”

Ruben turned to him, some borderline look of offense on his face.

“I’m not kicking you out of your cabin. If you have a spare bed in the officer’s quarters, that’s good enough for me, as long as you keep the log updated.”

A beat of silence.

His former mentor gave him a warm smile as he turned and headed down the stairs instead of up. “I’ve got a whole spare room next to Ademar’s.” And with a near sigh of relief, Ruben led him inside to a cramped but clean room at the end of the hall. Turned to leave. Paused. “Kid, I’ve got to say, if she had to send someone, I’m glad it was you.”

As was he. Few people knew Ruben like he did, and the man wasn’t one to start off on the wrong foot. Had he been some young, snobby shit who had demanded the captain’s quarters, who would insist on doing everything their way… three, maybe four nautical miles out to sea, and he would have been swimming with the fish.

And he would have deserved it.

Ruben was fair. If one gave him some berth, some respect, they’d never have any trouble with him at all. 

“I’m glad it was me too. I’m the only other captain I know who can mouth-off to you without being hung.”

A burst of laughter, and Ruben started down the hall again. “Don’t start with me, Vasco! I still might not be above such things.”

Ornery old shit.

“You sure you don’t want that I should take us out?”

“I’ll be on deck in a moment. Like you used to say: I can sleep when I’m dead.” 

Ruben’s sigh echoed down the hall. “Ain’t that the truth. No sleep for us until we join the admiralty or the dead. Still, no need to rush.”

“Don’t lie to me; if I didn’t rush, you’d piss and moan about my absence and write in the log that I should be hung for dereliction of duty.”

“Vasco, you know me all too well.”

“Unfortunately so, Captain! Unfortunately so.” With that and his mentor’s retreating chuckle, true to his word, he quickly unpacked the basics and made his way back onto deck. 

Though Ruben had forgotten to introduce the rest of the crew, they were capable enough, if a little rowdy. A few of them had given him some shit on their way out of port, but with a warning glare from Ademar, they’d fallen into line. New recruits indeed, at least based upon their mannerisms. They hadn’t navigated the deck with the ease of seasoned sailors; their movements had been jittery and jerked, as if they still hadn’t lost their fear of the sea.

Something he’d long ago done, though he couldn’t shake the feeling that, had she assigned him here, Admiral Cabral still thought him a child. But an order was an order, so as she’d requested, he’d left the port of New Sérène, his crew, his ship, and his lover behind. 

Anything for the Nauts.

Though supposedly they ‘knew no master but the sea’, Ruben agreed that it hardly felt like it. This felt like some game, some punishment for them both; sticking mentee over mentor in a cheap attempt to unseat order. And before he’d tucked into his quarters for a bit of shut-eye, Captain Ruben had confirmed he’d seen no unusual circumstances on the waters in years. No upsurge in pirates. No stranger weather than usual. 

Which had left him with an unsettling knowledge that had stayed long after Ruben had left: he’d done something wrong. Some action of his had pissed off Admiral Cabral, and she hadn’t the guts to tell him what or why. Had she found out about his smoking, maybe? His lenience with his crew and their contraband? 

Had Gustavo said something? 

Flavia? 

…De Sardet?

Who had hung him out to dry? Who had betrayed him? And why had it been worth being re-stationed? 

Too many questions for his current mental state. Too many questions overall.

When the moon hung high in the sky, Captain Ruben had returned to relieve him from the helm. To dismiss him to a slumber he might not find. 

So, he’d gone to the head for a quick piss before turning in, past a few crewmen who instead of waving or snapping a length of rope at him in jest, didn’t so much as look him in the eye as he walked by. Yet another occurrence that all but screamed that he wasn’t on the Sea Horse anymore. 

There would be no books to read by lantern before bed. No woman already started on that task who would strike a wanton grin and a daring pose the moment he walked through the door.

He was alone. And coming back here alone made it feel he always had been.

He made his way to his cabin. Shut the door behind him. No lock. No guarantee of privacy. 

But not everyone here seemed to care about privacy. Next door, the first mate was buried inches deep into some crew member based upon the sounds drifting in from his porthole. Hell, ‘feet deep’ would probably be closer to reality if the noises that woman made were any indication. Sounds much harsher, much more pained than De Sardet had ever made with him. But maybe that was how that crewman liked it. Maybe he shouldn’t judge.

Then again, maybe he should, because the par for being a considerate lover usually didn’t include calling one’s bed partner a ‘stupid slut.’

And yet, because De Sardet had slipped into his head again, he felt the need to curse her name too. To scream, to whine, to swear upon every star in the sky that she’d been _ perfect _ and she’d been _ his _and she’d been taken from him anyhow. 

Though life was hardly fair. His current situation was more than enough proof of that. 

So, he shut his porthole and dealt with the musty air inside his cabin for the slight noise reduction it provided. Took out some paper and his shitty pen, actually cursing his lack of books all the while. 

The partners next to him flipped positions, moving to one that put them against the opposite wall, praise to the rising tide. And as some other man reveled in the presence of his lover… he drew his former one.

A sketch and a poor one at that, but it resembled her. Her delicate nose. Her high cheekbones. Her angled jaw. The twist of her hair, a twist he’d left white as the paper because any darkness he could add would sully it.

And the longer he stared at his drawing, the more it bored a hole inside him.

Still, his neighbor continued on with what was definitely the second officer; no one else could mimic that high-pitched giggle. The first and second officers were together. Two lovers at sea, traveling at each other’s sides, the tides bringing them many places but never apart.

He clutched the paper close, the ink finally dry. A hand over his mouth muffled his shaking breaths. And finally, tears he’d held in, tears stained dark with yesterday’s kohl, ran rivers of black water down his cheeks.


End file.
